Times are changing

Arwyn standing her last watch-
Antibes, France- Mallorca, Spain

Yesterday was an important day for Arwyn and me. Slowly but surely we are going through the phases which end our time aboard Galileo (for now. It's the last dinner with the boss, then it's packing the boss off to the airport, it's our last sail back to Spain, saying buy to crew members as they trickle out, and yesterday was a big one- taking the boat out of the water.
Galileo has always been hauled out on railways. This puts the least amount of compression tension on a vessel, which at this size, can buckle a hull. This is what we have done the last two years in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. This year we went with a yard in El Toro, Mallorca called Port Adriano. They have a travel lift style crane capable of lifting 250 tons. Galileo has a gross registered tonnage of 183 tons, making the crane's lifting capacity adequate, but it still looked small and the slip was entirely too short for us. This means the crane couldn't lift us from the middle of the boat, rather it had to try and get as far aft as possible but was WAY too far forward for comfort.

Removing the forestays to allow for small crane 

 We also had to remove the head stays. To do this, we removed the outer stay and tied a halyard to a car, tensioned it by moving the car away from the boat, moving the lift into place, and re-attaching the halyard in front of the lift.

Travel lift was a little small, so I helped by using "the force"

Prepping Galileo was interesting from an engineering perspective and started about a month ago. I had to try and estimate our fuel and water consumption to make sure we were as close to empty as possible when lifting out. It really makes a difference: Galileo holds about 27,000 lbs of
diesel and 36,000 lbs of water.
It was almost emotional to watch her come out of the water. To see the areas of the boat that were worked on only with scuba gear come into plain sight as she lifted- was surreal I guess. I was one of the last off the boat after de powering the boat that kept us safe for two years. Call me dramatic, but when the engine room went quiet for that last time, I felt like an animate object became a piece of metal.









We watched as it lifted. The straps creaked and groaned and we cringed with each popping sound, but she made her way safely to her winter home. Chalked off, cooling tower installed, and shore power connected- goodbye to out home.









Below is a time lapse of the boat coming out on the travel lift and moving across the yard to our parking space.

We are now in an apartment in Palma. One more week of work and this chapter closes.