Class is out early...

...and not soon enough. 6 hours of agonizingly boring ASA bookwork class is enough to put anybody to sleep. Especially when you're doing the classwork in the salon of the boat that you really want to be sailing. Patience patience...tomorrow we sail. Probably a good thing to get the classwork done today because it rained a good part of the day. It was pretty cool being in the salon with all the windows and watching the storm go through. All the monohulls in the marina were bobbing around but we were just barely moving at all.



We did have an interesting visitor to our front porch in the middle of the day



And did I say it rained???



While I'm thinking about it, we've added a new page to our blog for the more technically interested. It will have many more of the technical facts that we are gathering to prepare for our retirement onto a sailboat. It's called the Boat Notebook and it's in a link in the menu bar on the right. You'll find our in-depth critique of this particular catamaran in there, but I will summarize this in laymen's terms for those of you who don't want to venture there.

What I've learned in the 24 hours since we boarded this catamaran:

1. We don't need this much boat. A 38 or 36 or even a 32 foot cat would be sufficient. Much less to clean and maintain and less things to break.

2. I can take a shower in about a gallon and a half of water and showering with an open hatch above you and warm sunshine streaming in is one of life's better pleasures.

3. Coffee tastes better on a boat.

4. I sleep much better on a boat than I do on land.

5. I don't want to anchor or have a slip in a marina in anything even resembling a resort town.

So tomorrow the fun begins. We start at 9:00am with motoring practice, learning to get in and out of the slip and backing and general maneuvering. Then Tuesday we take a day sail to get lunch. Then Wednesday we go sail all day, get lunch at the Oyster Bar and anchor out for the night. Thursday morning we head back here and Thursday afternoon we take our written tests (did I say how much I hate bookwork?). Friday morning we have a monohull chartered for half a day so we can do a fair comparison in the same waters. I think we'll be pretty busy after today!