We left the marina yesterday. It has been a while of no sailing, no moving, engine alignment, plans, projects and yadda yadda. It’s funny how great finally being back on the water felt. It wasn’t more than an hour, but it felt good. We sailed for a half hour then turned around and prop tested our new engine. After all the ol’ salts telling us we were going to be over-propped, we found out that we may be perfectly propped. (Lets just hope so). After sailing we anchored up outside the boat yard on the eastside of the channel. To no surprise we bumped-a-ground anchoring. We made it off and moved out a few more feet. Settling in we made dinner of sauteed veggies and hamburgers. After dinner we brushed our teeth, talked about the boatyard and read books. I can already feel the change coming with bedtimes, boat noises and alertness.

We anchored the boat straight across so Laurel and her brother, Steve, could bring it in at 11am the next day. They had a straight shot down the channel and into the haul out slip. After fretting at work till 11:27 the next day, Laurel called me saying the boat was being hauled out and the rudder was dropped. Dropping the rudder was one of our projects for the boatyard (it has to be dropped while in the slings due to the height of the rudder shaft). I’m glad we did because a huge crack was down the non visible inside of the rudder.

I definitely feel like the inadequate manly husband right now. Laurel is still off work from teaching, so I am at work while she is working on the boat. I feel so cool when I tell people that my wife is scraping barnacles, filling blisters, dropping the rudder and doing a multitude of masculine things I should be doing. Instead I play the wife role and work, make dinner and order parts online. Amazing and awesome are just two of the 1,843 words to describe her.

We will add photos and video shortly, my computer bit the dust so everything is happening from a PC laptop with windows dinosaur that has never heard of a photo.