There's nothing that induces joy so completely as a job that's done right.

Case in point. Through Hulls and Bilge Pumps.

Through hulls are a serious issue. In Unbelievable and The Pace of Change, I described some through-hull upgrades. Plus I had to free up all the bronze through-hulls; see Project Boat? Say What? Plus I created a Manifold of Automatic Bilge Pumps.

Did it all work? Will it all hang together? Did I make any mistakes?

Pump Number One

There was great joy when the put the Ranger into the slings. When they lifted her up, the bilge water shifted around and the number one pump fired up and pumped a gallon or so of water out.

When she was splashed, everything worked!

Yay!

So, we can finally check off a bunch of jobs that are totally, 100%, completely done and tested.

She floats!

Gloom

The engine, sadly, didn't start. She had fresh oil, a fresh oil filter, fresh oil in the fuel pump. I'd checked the transmission oil. We were reasonably sure it should start.

The starter clicked but wouldn't rotate.

What now? We're floating in the launch slip. It's 4:45 in the afternoon. Most folks have gone home.

John and Chuck climbed around inside the engine room for about 10 minutes, looking at stuff. John took the pipe wrench and banged the starter a half-dozen good solid shots.

And it started! It floated. The pumps worked. We're in business.

We still need another mast; we need our anchor handling windlass. We still need to move our roller-furling drums. But we're in business.