Building the Glen-L Yukon, Part 2
by Wayne Milner
Page 6
 Roger the cat and the author/builder are ready for the launching. |
The shelter in which I built the boat is on a slope near the shore, and the boat was built bow toward the water. When I turned the hull over, I dug a trench in the ground and lined it with plastic sheeting to accommodate the skeg and keep the hull lower than it would otherwise have had to be to make it level.
A few days before the launching, I decided to try the engine to make sure it would start when the boat hit the water. I connected up a garden hose to provide cooling water for the exhaust, and ran the engine.
To get the boat into the water, I bought two used 12,000-pound truck front wheels and axles from a trucker. I worked one of these under the front end of the hull. To get the other one under the rear of the hull, I had to raise the hull to lift the skeg out of the trench and work the wheels under.
At one point, I was walking along the side of the hull as it was being lifted, thinking that there was getting to be quite a slope to it. Suddenly the thought occurred to me that there might be water left in the exhaust line from the engine trial, and that if there was, I was now dumping it into the engine. I climbed into the hull and pulled the exhaust hose off the riser that connects it to the engine. Water poured out. I thought I was dead.
I got a level and straightedge, and ran a line from the lower edge of the exhaust outlet at the transom to the engine. Fortunately, the water had not reached a level high enough to put it into the engine, but it was closer than I care to think about. Just to confirm things, I turned the engine over by hand a couple of time before trying to start it again, and when I did start it, it ran perfectly.
 After inching her way to the water, she waits for the tide to lift her off her temporary cradle. |
To complete the cradle for the boat, I used the trusses that I had used to turn the hull over as longitudinals, and the rest was just blocking in appropriate places.
About a month before the launch, I made the mistake of telling everybody that the boat was going in the water on June 3, 2000. About 11:30 p.m. on June 2, I ran into a problem fitting the rudder, and the launch had to be put off to the following Saturday, June 10, 2000. Needless to say, this diminished the spectators' enthusiasm somewhat. However, the launch went off without a hitch.
I hired a dump truck to connect to the cradle and slowly let it roll down to the water's edge at low tide, then we just stood around waiting for the rising tide to lift the boat off the cradle. There was no fanfare or broken champagne bottles.