Heart was launched on June 3rd, as planned. When she was hoisted in the water the seal around the propshaft started leaking, but this was quickly fixed by tightening the brackets around the seal.
As the Mistral started kicking up, Heart stayed moored at the quay side for another few days. Good time to run the engine, try out onboard systems, etc.

When the Mistral died down it was time to move her to Port Saint Louis marina. It’s only a short stretch up the canal from Port Navy Services. She motored along happily and was met by the crew from the marina. Problems started when she wouldn’t point straight in reverse. She became very sluggish and wouldn’t respond at all to the rudder. Given that she is a long keel boat weighing 18 tons it is not that unusual to have a very sluggish response, but no response and going wherever she wanted…. She acted like an out of control tanker.

In order to work out what the problem was I returned to the shipyard where it was almost impossible to moor her on an unoccupied bit of the quayside. When I finally managed to tie her up, by literally pulling her in by hand, it very quickly became clear what the problem was. The seal on the propshaft had started leaking so dramatically that she had taken on that much water that she truly resembled a tanker. The water was up to the floorboards…..

Panic! Quickly switched on the bilgepump and pumped out the water, which then revealed that the seal was leaking rather a lot.

Tightened up the screws on the seal and realised that there were screws missing on the shaft. This meant that the seal couldn’t be tightened properly. Called out an engineer who temporarily put in some steel screws, adjusted the seal properly and mentioned that they really should be stainless steel. Put in a call to the previous owner and discovered that the screws were on the chart table. Put them in and she’s now properly watertight.

Trying to start the engine then revealed that the startermotor got water damage and the alternator burned out as a rag was left in the bilge somewhere and floated into it.

They both need to be replaced. So, more setbacks.

And on top od that she had suffered some damage to the rigging and hull whilst floating like a rudderless tanker in the marina.

When she got hauled out I discovered yet another issue; the propellor had lost two of it blades!

The judgement is still out whether that is another case of missing screws. It’s too much of a coincident that the shaft had to be moved backwards in order to put the new seal on and then the prop failed on a 500 meter stretch. I unfortunately had to decide that it would be better to haul her out again and get the issues fixed.

But, on the positive side, that’s what shake down cruises are meant for. After several years on the hard things will inevitably go wrong when you start using them. In this case Murphy’s law ran true.

So, Heart won’t be relaunched until September now as it is nigh impossible to get an engineer out in high season.