Is this realy March?

Anna and I decided to spend this unbelievable day on the water practicing many of the boating skills she learned while at her trawlerfest course in FL. She spent a few hours getting comfortable handling our boat. This included counting the number of turns of the wheel it takes to move the rudder from hard port to starboard. On our inboard this is the only way to tell when the rudder is centered. She took note of how many boat lengths it takes for our boat to come to a complete stop once put in neutral from different speeds. We both practiced backing up to objects and calling out distances. Our boat has a few blind spots from the wheelhouse and good communication is essential when docking in a tough spot. We finished off the afternoon by doing a man overboard drill. We had often talked of the need to do this, but in the past years had never actually done it. We both felt better having completed this drill and found that in the end we both learned things about how we should react to this situation that we had never before considered. With six weeks to go till our departure, it is crystal clear to us that our little boat is to be our home for a hole year, the more time we spend working the kinks out know, the better we will be when the time comes to us to push off.




When we returned to the dock we bumped into our friends Frank and Andrea, we just couldn't resist the opportunity to head up the harbor on one of the nicest March days I can remember.

The scenery was awesome, hope these pic's do it justice.

My buddy Frank, you might remember him from the hailer comments of an earlier post. Oddly enough he just couldn't resist trying it out.

Six Weeks! Bring it on!