We went out sailing last Sunday for a few hours under full sail and it was awesome! Only one minor adjustment was made during the sail to the rigging on the jib; otherwise it could not have gone better. The sails took a lot of work to get in good enough shape to hang but we did it. The condition of the sails were not quite what we expected as we were told upon purchase that the boat had a full set of good sails – very disappointing but we again put a lot of TLC into it and they will be fine until we get south and are ready to replace them.
We weathered some pretty bad thunderstorms last night with winds in excess of 60 miles an hour. Luckily we are still here in port at the marina and tied to the dock. Captain braved the wind and rain to add another line to the bow to ensure that we did not bump into the million-plus dollar boat that is moored behind us. The winds made for a very comfortable night of sleep….just like rocking in a cradle, I slept like a baby.
We are going to head up to D.C. in the next day or two for a test run before we actually make the long trek down south. Captain says its about 1200 miles down to Miami (not that that is a destination but just a distance reference). It is around 150 miles to D.C. so that should be a good distance to make a test run. We are going to head out to sea to make the southern trek as we have too much of a draft to do the Intracoastal.
We have put everything we have into this boat; blood, sweat, and tears and even more than that. It has been taxing on both of us in ways no one will ever know or imagine but hopefully, all of it is about to start paying off. Closer and closer to the cheeseburgers in paradise! Yikes, time to get to getting on the passports!!