Finally sailing!

So after a great and slow morning of the more fun Sunday stuff. (The street Market, coffee, a visit to the chocolate factory, more food from the market...) Carrie informed me that, yes, we could take the boat out and go sailing today. I was ecstatic.

When we came home I immediately began stripping off the bimini cover over the cockpit. The walls were taken down. The top was furled. The lines securing us to the dock were simplified to prepare for slipping the moorage. The dock step was removed... I got her ready to go. While I was doing all of the topsides preparation Carrie was busy below getting all of the items that could be tossed around stowed. Both jobs took about the same amount of time.

The next thing that needed to happen was to get the engine going and head out. This first was easy but I was mighty concerned about the exit of the slip. (and the re-entry of the same.) All of that fear was unfounded as the M&M/Clarion slid past the end of the pier and turned majestically in her own length to manage the fairway with plenty of room. After we rounded the corner to the outside fairway we were home free!

The gas dock was crowded, what with the first real sun that boaters in Seattle had seen in months, and we decided to give it a while and go sail first and hit the gas dock on the rebound. We motored away through the cut towards the larger waters of Lake Washington.

In 20 minutes we were there. Not a bad time to get through the cut, I thought. We managed to get both bridges to open as soon as we arrived so there was little standing to and waiting for access. We made great speed.

As soon as we were out of the navigable channel we hoisted sail. There were a few complications. The main has a tendency to hang up on nearly everything. The Lazy Jacks especially, but also the reefing lines as well. After a few attempts, I cleared the hurdles and set sail like a proper sailor and we were off! The stuff aboard this boat is wonderful! I have all self tailing winches and a roller furling genoa. There are many conveniences that I have never had on a sailing vessel before, including having all of the running lines go into the cockpit. It is fantastic. I could easily single hand her if I could manage to leave the dock and return without assistance. Sailing was a breeze and the end came too quickly. Carrie found a Ladybug on my sweater on deck. A harbinger of her mother's spirit on our maiden sail. We took photos and then were joined by our neighbor boat with Greg and Bonnie Riddler aboard. We sailed together for about an hour and then headed for home.

On the way home we stopped for gas "across the street" at the gas dock. I was feeling confident after being under sail and I managed a very slick landing at the dock.

After the gas was aboard we headed in and to the last test of the day: the landing in our slip. Our slip is on the inside of a set of finger piers. The fairway there is slightly wider than my boat is long which makes it tricky, but the real challenge comes from needing to go in stern first due to the need for our shorepower inlet to line up properly, so we have to go "against" the natural propwalk of the boat. This time I had been figuring it for hours in my head and I managed to push the nose up toward the boat forward of our slip and crank her into reverse to get the stern around the finger just right. My next door neighbor Richard said it looked like I knew what I was doing so I felt good about that.

After all was done I settled down to clean up the boat and have a glass of wine while Carrie hung out below and warmed up. we later went out for pizza but that's another story...