After arriving on Thursday, we had a couple of busy days shopping for everything — kitchen stuff, tools, safety gear, everything — you name it. We picked up Allan and Joan from the train station on Saturday and caught up with Brendan from Vicsail on Sunday morning. Then we were into it. Unpacking everything… Commissioning stuff … Checking stuff — it was full on. We managed to find places for all our shopping and the bits that we unpacked on La Mischief.
The new Lagoons have their mast and rigging installed on the hard stand and then are put on a commissioning jetty where they are finished off. There were 8 new Lagoons on the jetty when we arrived.
Commissioning has been an interesting process with all the different players and contractual arrangements. Lagoon have a limited number of options available that can be done during manufacture but they refuse to deviate from their standard assembly line process so any extras you want, have to be done separately. Lagoon contract the commissioning work to a company called Sailing Atlantic Services SAS who we also used to commission some of our after market items.
As well as getting lots of help from Brendan Hunt, the MD of Vicsail, who came over from Sydney to help us through the process, we also dealt with Olivier from Lagoon who was their Customer Relations Manager — a suave Frenchman, who was obsessed with Rugby, and was very charming.
Jean-Christophe was our go to man from SAS — he was brilliant, as he worked quite hard to make sure everything was finished off before we left for Easter. Allan and I really liked working with Jean- Christophe — he called a spade a spade. Joan threatened to run away with him if Allan wore his new beanie to a restaurant. By Monday lunchtime, we were casting off the dock lines and heading out for our first sea trials.
