Ariadne was launched on April 21, 2017 at 8 a.m. after renovating two busy fair weekends.
April 21
The launch was scheduled for 8 a.m. Hartwig’s son Olav had arrived on time to help with the launch. At 7.55 the doors of the hall opened and a low small truck (could it also be powered by OM636?) Drove under the frame, lifted the frame up a bit and took Ariadne to the landing site. To my surprise, I remebered to ask the crane operator if there was a scale on the crane? Yes it was! What does it look like? 10,9 tons. Without 350l of diesel and the same amount of water + all equipment and crew. In practice, therefore, it hovers somewhere around 11,5 – 12 tonnes.
A fixed crane lifted Ariadne off the buck, turned and lowered it into the water. We got down the ladder to the boat, started the engine and drove off the landing site. Very easy! We moved directly to the mast crane. the rigg of Ariadne has been maintained by Riggtech and the guy said that we need to wait for the rise of the water so the rising the mast is easier. This was done. After lifting the mast, we moved Ariadne to its berth. The boat floats! For a few days now, I had been hunting for a life raft as close as possible when I had forgotten to order online, and in one of the Hamburg boat accessories shops, based on a telephone conversation – in German, of course – I reportedly should be. I drove to the scene, and yes there was. The setback was that only four-person versions, six-person versions would be available on request …… I was hinting at another boat supply store in Hamburg so I got there again. Same thing, four-person versions. The plans changed again from the next day’s program to what I had planned to get food and drink for. The SVB called again as my phone conversation with them made sure they were there.
April 22.
So in the morning again to SVB and there I loaded the car with a six-person liferaft – albeit a bag-like one – spinnaker sheets, a copy of Bruce and a modest 8-meter anchor chain. The rest of the day went according to the original plan in the food and beverage stores but with some failure. In Germany, almost all beer cans are 0.5l, and I had to give up finding 0.3 beer cans according to my original spec.
April 23.
Stockholm and route E4 started to call again, but in the morning I checked the situation at Ariadne before leaving. The engine’s seawater pump, of course, dropped even though Hartwig’s mechanic spent a couple of hours with the pump the day before. Well, I searched the tools and disassembled the seawater pump. The pump leaked from the cover gasket and after making one new gasket which failed I tuned the old one again with a little gimmick in place and got it to hold. At the same time, the condition of the impeller was checked. It wasn’t new, but it looked intact.
I left for Stockholm in the early afternoon at 2 p.m. So it would be about 17 hours to get to Stockholm again, and that was enough since there was a familiar route. The norm is an hour-long short sleep and some additional breaks of jumping, walking and refueling. It was confusing that when I got from Denmark to the Swedish side it snowed, and quite heavily!
April 24.
I arrived at Vikingline’s Stockholm terminal in the morning. On board, I already enjoyed an almost traditional breakfast and after that, doing varied between reading and napping. In the evening I drove home from Turku and the thoughts were already on the next trip to Hamburg, the return part of which would be sailing from Hamburg to Inkoo. The time for sailing home was steadily approaching.