Launch day
Puffin was launched from the factory at La Grande Motte on schedule! Now she is in the water the mast, rigging, sails and electronic installation can all be completed.
I wanted Puffin to look a lot like Wildling, so we chose white for the hull, mast, boom and beams, but we kept the standard 4X black dagger-boards and stanchions. One other difference from Wildling is there is no stainless steel on Puffin. Everything is either carbon, gelcoat or anodized aluminum. There was a lot of stainless on Wildling and it’s a big chore to keep it polished and looking nice.
The factory build team did a great job. The only problem we encountered is the bow roller on the 4X doesn’t fit our Ultra anchor so the Outremer team are modifying it.
Here are some photos from the launch.
Carbon fiber mast and standing rigging installed
A few firsts for this mast. First carbon non-rotating mast on a 4X, and the first mast not in the standard 4X black color.
Everything is looking great, the only issue we encountered is the 4X bow roller does not fit our Ultra anchor, so Outremer will make some modifications to the bow roller to fix this.
Sail Puffin 
She’s a beauty. Love your blog.
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Looking good Doug, port stern, is that a bracket for the Watt and Sea?
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Exactly! We placed it on the port side (guest hull) because it gets a bit noisy when operating and I want to be able to sleep off-watch 🙂
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Good luck with the new boat!
Best regards
Mark
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You must have succeeded well with the weight savings. Even though it is dry weight just look how high she sits in the water. It is almost like Outremer should have lowered the line of bottom paint. I think all here are almost as eager as yourself to know more about your first test sail.
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Hi Doug, This is Tammy and Tom from Mac….are you in La Grand Motte? We are here now and would love to meet you in person. We’ve seen Puffin in the yard and she looks grand!
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Hi Tammy and Tom, we’ll be there for the handover in early August, hope to see you then!
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Ah, we’ll be gone by then…so will miss you….another time, then. Congratulations and how exciting your August will be!
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Hi Doug,
Congrats on the exciting launch.
What items are atop the mast (electronics, instrumenation, lights)?
Why the decision to place radar on spreader rather than stanchion as on Wildling?
Best,
Stephen
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Hi Stephen, I’ll go into the details of Puffin’s electronics in my next post. For the radar, we had to put it on a stern pole on Wildling because the rotating mast caused problems with the radar overlay on the charts (although B&G say they have fixed this now). Puffin has a fixed mast so no issue putting the radar up on the spreader.
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Looks great. We enjoy all of the information on your blog thanks Doug. Cheers Nat and Josh.
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Looking good Doug!
Do you have a ETD for your shipping?
We should catch up next time I’m in brisbane. Probably next month.
Brent.
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Hi Brent, Sevenstar Yacht Transport can’t provide me with an ETD until the vessel leaves Palma, but I will let you know as soon as I have it.
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Hi Doug
Do Outremer actually weigh the boat after completion to see how close they got to the target build weight?
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Hi Hans, it’s my understanding that they weight every boat. I haven’t seen the data but it will be a bit difficult to interpret because the published light ship weight is for a theoretical configuration and every actual boat will be different. What would be useful is to compare boats in the same production series to see the differences. I will discuss this with Outremer when I am next at the factory.
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