Well, I haven’t been very good at updating my blog!

I am pleased to report that the prop repair held perfectly for the season and I was assured by the guy who redid the repair that it will hold for 20 years or more! So far so good and on haul-out, it is a solid as a rock.

We got the boat back from its final repair after launch, put on the mast, rigging and sails and were off sailing as much as we could!  Well, actually it wasn’t that fast as I had to install a depth sounder/fish finder first, given our depth sounder doesn’t work.  Another simple job of “popping it in”.  This simple procedure entailed a major wire fishing job for the transducer cable including taking apart the steering pedestal, overcoming my fear of all things electronic and electrical and sorting out a host of logistical issues. I will never forget the feeling of pushing the power button expecting either 1. Nothing, or 2. Sparks and smoke, to see a message pop up on the screen asking me to select English, French or Spanish!  Also, being relatively new to the boat I took some time to replace the fuel filter and impeller as I had no idea when they were last replaced and didn’t want them failing on one of our trips.

The first step though was some sailing lessons for my wife, Ruth.  A very competent sailor, Donna, from our club, agreed to mentor my wife, which, I felt, was a far better tack to take then me teaching her!  We were anxious for Ruth to be able to dock so I would be the one jumping down to the slip and managing the lines…but learning to take the helm to relieve me and execute MOB procedures was important too.  Donna was truly amazing.  So good in fact that the problem now is that Ruth loves the helm so much that I rarely get a turn at it!  Rather than screaming from a sharp heel, she is now yelling “yahoo”!  I recently docked our boat singlehanded and our dock neighbour stated “you did that almost as well as Ruth!