Today is the day apparently. We are going to put in the water, yyeeaahhh!. It has been over a year since Cat's-Paw Iv has been in the water so it is high time we were floating again. We were told that it would be about 0930 so we were ready, the backstay is undone, the fenders and dock lines are tied on in the appropriate spots and we are all a go. The boat is on a trailer at the moment so they towed us to the middle of the lot and left us there. We had been tucked away in a little corner but they moved us and we are here until after lunch apparently. It is a quite weird being in the centre of everything but I guess I should be happy we are closer to the water.
We have been busy getting new stuff and installing it on the boat. Barry insisted that we have a new wind vane, the one we had was getting old and we were always having problems with it. Our buddy Brian came for a visit the other day and he called it boat jewelery, it is so shiny and new. We have decided to call our wind vane, "Bob", if we can't have my brother on board steering we will have something that should be almost as reliable as him! We spent a good two days getting Bob installed, I hope we did it properly, we used the old mounts on the boat so we did not have to make any new holes or gunk up any old ones.
The other things we have been working on is a new wind generator, we have the pole and the new stainless steel bracing struts to reinforce the radar arch where the wind generator will be attached. The only thing is that it may cast a shadow on the solar panels, but I don't think that can be helped, there wasn't too many other choices about where it could go.
We also bought a new dinghy. It is a 2.6 meter rigid bottom with inflatable pontoons. I was worried that it looked a little small, it is 30 cm smaller than out last dinghy but I think it will do fine. I think a bigger one would not go very fast at all with out little 5 hp motor to move it along. A dinghy is hugely important, whenever you anchor it is your conveyance to shore and back, it is your taxi for your groceries and fuel, and it allows you explore all sorts of places that you can't take your boat. This dinghy also comes with nice wooden rowing oars, so I should be able to get some exercise when I feel like it.

We are afloat at long last. We got into the slip with only a slight nudge of one of the pilings. It rained all day so it put a stop to our work, and I decided that to celebrate I was going to take the rest of the day off and just relax and enjoy being afloat.