Launching Attitudes and Washington DC (4-2001)

	This is our boat, Attitudes, at Jefferson Beach Marina in St. Clair Shores waiting to be loaded on the truck for shipping to Annapolis on Monday, April 9. Boats are stored in cradles that rest on railroad ties. The ties rest on cinder blocks. When it's time to move the boat the red dolly is moved under the ties, jacks are placed on the corners of the ties and used to lift the ties off the cinder blocks. The cinder block are then moved out of the way and the ties, cradle, and boat are lowered onto the dolly. The boat then can be moved by a tug.
	Attitudes being lowered onto the truck. The tug moves the boat under the hoist and straps are run under the boat so the hoist can lift it. The truck moves into position, the hoist moves forward the final distance, and the boat is lowered on to the truck. Boats are launched into the water basically the same way except the hoist moves over the launch well and lowers the boat into the water.
	It was pouring rain when Attitudes arrived at Port Annapolis Marina (PAM) on Wednesday, April 11. The procedure to launch the boat is the same as described above. At PAM they use mobile hoists to move and launch boats. Jefferson beach also has one of these but mainly uses their larger fixed hoists. After Attitudes was taken off the truck they left her (boats are "her") hanging in the hoist during lunch so we could paint a few bare areas on the hull. It was quite a sight - Karen holding the umbrella over me, water running down the hull, and me trying to paint these bare patches over my head. If you remember your physics, gravity gets in the way of trying to apply paint over your head. Somehow I managed not to get any on my clothing, only on my hands and shoes.
	I still can't believe how much stuff we managed to get aboard. Here's part of the result. After we clearned enough stuff away that we could actually move around in the boat a lot of it ended up in the aft quarter berth. This berth is about 3' high, 4' wide, and 6' deep. And it's packed solid in this picture. After a couple of weeks it's a bit smaller (the pile of stuff, not the berth) and more manageable.
	Karen standing in the cockpit of Attitudes in our temporary slip at PAM. We're in slip G16. Ocean Tiger, Buster's home, is next to us on the right side of this picture. As you can see we don't have our masts up yet. The thing on the left in the front of the picture is our folding boat that will serve as our "car" when we're out cruising. The long, blue object in the middle front of the picture is our bimini cover for the cockpit. It's stored there to keep it out of the way for now. The blue thing next to Karen on the right is the stearing wheel station (binacle) with a cover on it. And the 2 small blue objects on the left of Karen are a BBQ grill and propane tank holder. Oh yeah, the long white objects running diagonially across the deck are battens. These are stiffeners that are placed in the sails to help them keep their shape when in use.
	Barnacles! Now here's something that boaters on the Great Lakes definately don't have to deal with. This boat is in the yard at PAM.
	The Washington monument. This picture was taken near the Tidal Basin.
	The Jefferson monument. Taken inside the monument the shaft of light is from the inside lighting.
	Karen working on the masts. I had figured that we needed to spend about 1 full day getting the masts ready for stepping (putting them up in the boat.) We've now spent about 4 days working on them! Everything takes longer than you estimate, and as you work on every job you discover at least 2 more jobs to do. But we're almost done now. Just a couple of last items to complete. The masts are scheduled to be stepped on Wednesday. Then we'll have a sailboat again instead of a really slow power boat (hehehe).