LAUNCHING Distant Shores IV ! New SAILING Adventures are About to Begin! | EP 247

After all the many months of building Distant Shores 4 in the Netherlands, the long-awaited launch day arrives, and not without a little magic. We're Cheryl and Paul Schaard, hosts of the Distant Shores Sailing Adventure TV series. We've been cruising and living aboard for 34 years, documenting the sailing lifestyle. Join us for the launching of our fifth boat, a custom aluminum Orion 49. Wow, this is such an exciting event, and it's so special to be home with the family, with my mom, brothers, nieces and nephews. And it's about half an hour till totality, and the sky has cleared, and it's about halfway there now. Very cool. It's a pretty good-sized bite out of the sun right now. Very cool. Well, this is so incredible. We've been really looking forward to getting to see the eclipse, and we've never seen a total one before. But as they keep warning you not to look at the sun, but of course, as sailors, we're always using a tool like this sextant to monitor the height of the sun. The path of the light comes into the sextant, and then bounces off the mirror and back into the telescope. And this way, there'd be a clear view of the horizon, but you can't use that with the sun. So we'll put in two shades, and we should be about right. And we're just going to put in shades to reduce the sun so that you can look at it safely. So it's actually quite a good tool. If you've got a sextant, and you put the shades in front of the mirrors, you'll be cutting down the sun so you can safely watch it, and a telescope to see it in close detail. But the street lights are on. And it looks like the sun is setting. It's so dark. Yeah. Sunrise. Oh my gosh, that's so beautiful. Oh my god. Very cool. Well, let's see if we can take a look at the boat. We've just flown back to the Netherlands from Canada, and we haven't seen the boat for a month. But launch is coming up. What do you say, honey? Oh, such an exciting time. So great to see it out of the shop. Oh my gosh, they've got the logos on. Oh wow, there she is. Oh my gosh, the boat is going in the water after all this time and all the work. The day has finally come. Congratulations, Paul. I hope you have a lot of good journeys. Thank you very much, Ronald. Very exciting. This is a big moment. Oh, we are just thrilled. This is fantastic. I hope you have a lot of nice journeys. Oh, we will, for sure. I know it already. Super happy. New boat. Very excited, everybody. We're going to go on some great adventures, and going to be starting up a northern trip, and this is a great way to start out. Thank you, everyone, at Engsel Yachts. What do you got there? Keys. Oh my gosh, the keys to the boat. Okay, we couldn't get on board the boat earlier. She was just being lowered down into the water. But now it's the end of the day, and all the workmen have gone home, so we've been given the key to the boat. That's pretty darn exciting. So we're going to go on board for the first time. The Distant Shores 4 is in the water. Welcome aboard, honey. Thank you. Our new floating home. There we go. That new seal. All right. Oh, wow. Oh, they've got so much more finished in here than before. The nav station's all installed. The aft cabin, pretty much finished. Oh, yeah, that nav station wasn't in when we were here before. Yeah, that's looking great. That's going to be very nice. They get the feel of it all in here. Oh, and they've got all the siding in. Everything's in except the final ceilings aren't finished. So I think they kicked out the guys from the ceiling for work on the ceilings in order to do mechanical work. And the galley's missing the stove and fridge, so there's a few little bits and pieces to be installed. A lot of this stuff has been done and set up. The ship is live, so the batteries are on. Blinking away in there. Yeah. Oh, and look, they've got the white upper wood bulkheads painted. They were looking very stripey for a while. Yes, it looks the way they painted them first and then routed the grooves. Oh, and now they've got the satin finish on the wood. Wow, that mahogany just is fantastic looking. Lovely. Beautiful. So all the doors and hatches and the ceiling panels are still out. Yeah. Oh, and they got some of the flooring in. Yeah, the floor is still on the side. So varnish is finished in much of this. So the painter guy is coming back on the weekend. Yeah, so the varnish is mostly finished. The pilot house and the galley still need varnish pieces done. Oh, forward cabin I think is pretty much all done. It looks like, yeah, the satin finishes on it. Just the ceilings have to go in. They're leaving all those till the end. Yeah, the ceilings are done. They just need to be installed. And then they're just doing the last corners around the hatches. Wow, this is so exciting. She's in the water, just held in by the slings at this point. But she's, she's afloat. She's afloat. Oh my goodness. Float on her boat. This wood feels so beautiful, really nice. We're not moving on board just yet. There's still a few weeks worth of work to do. Launch party is in nine days. April 20th, Saturday, April 20th. Yeah. Oh my goodness. All right, I missed that. They're moving the mast down here too. The mast is here too. We should have explained basically what they're doing. The plan is to put the boat in the water. Whenever they put a new boat in the water, they want to set it down and stand the mast up and make sure that everything's working okay with the mast. And then with the mast up, the sailmakers come get the boat sorted out in the water. Forestay and the backstage will get cut. And then they can come and start making the sails. So they'll be building the sails over the next week or two. Then the mast will be stood up with the proper length of standing rigging all around. So, so the mast has arrived all wrapped up for shipping from the mast maker, Selden. And then it will be stood up and measured carefully. And then the lower ends of all the shrouds and forestay and backstays will be terminated after having measured and checked that everything's going to fit properly. This is the, the vang, the kicker attachment right down by the deck, little gooseneck for the boom. The winches are already mounted on the mast but all the extra breakable things and the spreaders are being put on now. But the wires and ropes inside the mast have already been run. So, but all the delicate things like the VHF antenna the windex, the anchor light, mast headlight, electronics other things are being attached now, so. What a day, the boat has gone in the water and now they're about to step the mast. The stepping of a mast is a really big part of the construction of a sailboat. So it's another opportunity for celebration and ceremony and it is tradition to place a silver coin under the mast and it's good luck, it will bring the crew good fortune and will protect the crew from harm. So we have a Canadian coin, it's a silver dime and it has the Blue Nose sailboat on it which is a very famous Canadian sailboat. So we know it will bring us good luck and good fortune in our adventures to come. And to make sure it stays in place we'll put the mast facing that way, I guess. Okay, I need long fingers, okay. I don't want it to flip over and I have backup in case I drop it overboard. Okay, good luck Cheryl. Thank you, I should have brought tweezers. There we go. There is still a lot of work to be done to the boat after her splash this week. So we and the Anxiale Yachts team have planned an official Anxiale Orion launch party and open boat event in a couple of weeks so everyone can see Distant Shores 4 at her best. Stay tuned to join in the party with a glass of something special as we christen the boat bless her builders and crew and give you a tour of our new floating home.