Well after heading down to the boat early on Saturday and spending the day cleaning it up. I pulled the old brown carpet out to shake it out, then decided that the white fiberglass floors look so much better, so I took it up to my car to save as a future template if I want a different type of carpet.

I got the boat cleaned up but my wife decided that she was going to drive her own car down and meet me right before my client and her boyfriend were due to arrive, as it happens she ran out of gas and arrived about 45 minutes after my client Kimberly and her boyfriend Vince.

Now let me make myself clear, I become friends with some of my clients/customers it is one of the things I love about my job and I became fast friends with Kimberly, she is just that type of person, very open, friendly, funny, etc. So when I bought the Catalina and was telling her about it she asked if I had considered renting it to make up for the loss of income from the slow down in home remodels. I pretty much said that I would never rent the sailboat, and the list of people that I would loan her too was very very very short. Then I asked her why and she told me about how she wanted to surprise her boyfriend on his 40th with some kind of cruise. I told her I would be happy to take her and her boyfriend out for a dinner cruise.
That was two months ago, she has been so excited about the evening that she was willing to go out if it was raining (the weather report was iffy).

But as it turned out yesterday was beautiful and even though the winds were light, it was going to be a nice sail day.

Kimberly and Vince showed up at 4, they brought the food and drink and we spent the next hour just kind of hanging out at the dock. I hanked the jib on at the dock so I didn't have to worry about it on the river, warmed the outboard up (still finicky) then after my wife showed up we cast off and motored out of the marina. I raised the sails going out of the harbor as the wind was on the beam and kind of motor sailed out. Just at the entrance to the harbor the wind picked up and the boat started healing lifting the outboard out of the water, so I shut it off. As soon as the outboard shut off the wind died a little and I think we were dragging half of the underwater weeds in the harbor off of my keel and rudder. the wind started to push us into the marsh at the entrance to the harbor and of course the outboard did not want to start.
I asked my wife to grab the tiller while I messed with the outboard, then turned facing aft grabbing the starter rope and giving it a hard fast pull. I felt my hand hit something hard and turned around to see my wife kneeling in the cockpit holding her head. Rather than move to the other side of the cockpit, she leaned over and without thinking of what was behind me I nailed her good. She was seeing double and had a horrible headache but did not want to go back in, and actually soldiered through the night, without showing how much pain she was in.
Here is a picture of our route. The first push pin is where we ran aground and I hit my wife, the second is where we dropped anchor, had dinner and watched the sunset.



Once we got the outboard running, and out of the mud, we motored/sailed over to the floating channel marker that the local sea lions call home and let Kimberly and Vince say hello and get some pictures.

Then we headed down wind and up river with the returning tide, considering we were still hauling a small forest on the keel I think we made decent time, the temp was dropping fast though, so I put the pop up camper canvas on, and actually dug out the propane tent space heater I keep on board and Pegi (my wife) Kimberly & Vince went below while I manned the tiller. We arrived at potato slough dropped anchor and had some awesome chicken wraps that Kimberly had prepared, hung out, talked and enjoyed each other company. Then watched the sunset, hung out some more, then I hauled the anchor and motored back home.

Of course the moon did come out last night, just not until about 10:30, and it was dark, luckily I brought the GPS and the channel is well marked. The new lights worked great though, and I really really love the new deck light. It made hauling anchor and putting the boat away a lot easier.

Here are some pic's from the sail.

Pegi and Kimberly coming down to the boat.



Kimberly at the tiller.




Kimberly and Vince at sunset.



Sunset at potato slough.


Mount Diablo in the distance.


Pegi and I in the Cabin.



Kimberly and Vince in the cabin.



Well hopefully this is the start of a great season, the outboard still needs some fine tuning and now a new spark plug and wire since I had to take the motor cover off on the way back (to tap the carb and get it to start) when I was backing into the slip the dock caught the outboard and broke then end off of one of the spark plugs and wire ends, not a big deal I need to change the plugs anyway, and I got the new timing belt so I will probably do that repair at the same time.

Well until next time.