Saturday, March 23, 2013

The season's first sail

...just not on our boat.  Tim stayed home to work on the bulkhead table but I needed some sewing supplies to work on the mainsail cover at home during the snow storm tomorrow, so I went out to the boat Friday morning. On the way through the small town of Carlyle I saw hundreds of King pelicans in the stream at the bottom of the dam and decided to stop in the park they have there and take some pictures.



Disappointingly blurry - it was too dark to get fast speed

They all dove for fish in symmetry - amazing to watch!

I spent the day putting a new step on the side of the boat. I got the idea from the World Tour Stories blog and since their boat is so similar to ours I decided to try it. I'm very happy with the result - it's much safer than me trying to reach the deck in one step. No problem for Tim, but for me it's always a little scary, especially when the wind is from the East and the boat is off the dock a little. The rope knot keeps the wood off the topsides and the whole thing clips to the stanchion and can be removed in 2 seconds to stow. It's nothing fancy - only a scrap piece of treated 1x8 that happened to be residing in back of the shed here at the marina, but it gets the job done.

Saturday morning a friend of ours, James, asked if I wanted to go sailing. I've learned that there are rare times when one should say no to that question, but today was not one of them. The sky had cleared to a deep deep aquamarine, the wind was flirting with the flag, and I had my down jacket and ski pants on board. Off we went for a trip across the lake and back, reaching 6.2 kts at one point in his Hunter 30. It was perfect and I felt only moderately guilty enjoying it while Tim was working so hard in the garage in the city.
















It was a good two days with no pressing agenda. With the relaxing time shooting pics of the pelicans and working on the boat with Pandora running and the first sail today, I got a tiny preview of life afloat - I'm very very ready.

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