First Launch!

Has anyone else ever seen a 44-foot sailboat put in the water? Well, I hadn't before the trip so I practically begged Scotty to wait for me to get there before it happened. At first he sort of scoffed, "It's nothing to see. Wouldn't you just rather show up with the boat ready to go?"

Um... no, not really, honey. (Men, sometimes...)

This is my sad face at the thought of that happening!

I mean, this was a milestone after all. And with all the time we spent waiting to get the Wind-Lass in the water, I was beginning to think maybe we'd bought a nice little house on stilts instead of a boat...

Scotty had already been in Annapolis for eight days by the time the rest of the crew arrived, minus Larry who had flown out earlier to help Scotty with some necessary repairs.

On my way East, I stopped into Minneapolis for a quick layover while heading to the East Coast so my dad and I could fly out together. And Scotty's dad managed to get on a flight from Atlanta that arrived in Baltimore within minutes of ours coming from Minneapolis, so that Scotty could pick us up all at once. It sounded like a plan that was too good to be true, but actually ended up working out. (Hooray for small miracles!)

What I didn't take into account was that Scotty would be arriving in an economy rental car (booked by yours truly), and we had enough luggage for a small army of refugees. Picture that cartoon where a crowd of clowns try to fit into a tiny vehicle- yep, that was us at the Baltimore airport.

So, feeling very sardine-like, we all made it the 30-odd miles south to Annapolis to spend two nights on the boat while it was still out of the water.

The next several days were jam-packed with shopping. It was something I had sort of been looking forward to because living in Juneau really makes me crave variety in my shopping experiences and I wouldn't even call myself an enthusiastic shopper. Really, even grocery store shopping in unfamiliar stores/ cities, is a delight for me these days.

But since I had never helped provision or refit a boat before, I couldn't have anticipated the sheer magnitude of what  it would take to procure all things needed by a large sailboat and a crew of five for a 500-mile cruise. I ended up doing most of the shopping with my dad and Scotty's dad, while Scotty and Larry diligently worked on getting the boat ready. Talk about a learning curve, but with everyone pulling together we managed to get it done in time. Let's just say, I got to know this place intimately by the time we pulled out of town:

The day of the launch we all woke up around 7:30 a.m. and made various trips to the showers before the boatyard staff arrived for the day. Then at about 8:30 a.m. I called to let the office know we were ready to go, all the while sort of panicking about whether we really were. The boatyard guys arrived a mere five minutes later (!) and it was time to get off the boat while they started going to work with arranging huge straps underneath the hull and then removing the boat stands.

The whole thing may have been nerve-wracking for this new owner, but those guys were pros.

Now that I've seen it happen, I'm guessing the next time won't be quite as big of a deal. But I'll still probably breath a sigh of relief when the big girl slips happily into the water again.

Next up, our Chesapeake Bay crossing!