Two Years and Twenty Miles

Two years of planning, organizing, fantasizing, researching, explaining, worrying, packing and moving are over. We're standing on our sparkling new boat ready to cast off the lines for our maiden voyage. It's a bit of a stretch to call a 20 mile day-sail across the bay a "voyage", but to the three of us it was a big deal.

Mirasol was a long way from being ship shape, but we had to move her to our slip in Rock Hall and the weather was as favorable as it was going to get for several days. Jen let slip the dock lines and I eased Mirasol off our Annapolis dock. The wind was blowing 20-25 knots so we motored out of the close quarters of Spa Creek and into the Bay before raising the main.

It was "smooth sailing" the whole way. Early on, we got on the wrong side of a string of crab pots but Jen saw them in time and we back-tracked to go around. I and the rest of the crew were a bit anxious for the first hour or so, but by the time we cleared the Bay Bridge, we had all relaxed. It was a comfortable broad reach and we took it easy while we got familiarized: a reef in the main and no jib for most of the trip. Towards the end we raised the jib and let her stretch her legs. I was very pleased that with Mirasol loaded up with all our worldly possessions, she still pulled 8+ knots in 20 knots of wind and a reef in the main.

Jen navigated, I trimmed the sails and we split the helming and Quinn-watching between us. Quinn was very well behaved - sat right where we told him, even during the mayhem of the docking...

Well yes, then came the docking. This was my first attempt at docking Mirasol, and it was a bit intimidating. Mirasol is 42' long and 24' wide, and her salon roof is 10' above the waterline. That makes for a great deal of surface area for the 20 - 25 knot winds to push around. Then there is the "T" dock we had reserved. Well, it's more like an "L"dock, where our portion of the L is only about 10' long. The rest of the "dock" is a series of pilings we can tie off to. That's all fine and good if there is no wind, or the wind is blowing onto the dock, but as chance would have it for my first docking attempt, the wind was blowing 20 knots OFF the dock. Well, I'm pleased to report that we managed to dock without crashing, grounding, falling overside, spousal disharmony or fouling of the props. We had a few friendly neighbors standing on our little nub of a dock to catch dock lines and provide advice / commentary, and with skillful use of the throttles (read: crap, we're going to hit... ok, um, port full aft, starboard full forward... TURN, c'mon baby TURN!!!, oops, too FAR! starboard full aft, port full forward, STOP turning PLEEEEASE... whew, that was close... OK... damn wind's blowing us off again... port half forward... whoops, too far, starboard half forward, NO, that's not doing it... port full aft, there, now we have it... uh oh... etc.) we found ourselves safely and securely docked. NO PROBLEM!

Honey, which box has the RUM?!?!?!