Finally moving through the water!

We arrived in Westbrook early Friday morning of Memorial Day weekend to find Oestara tied happily up near the fuel dock, with her mast finally in! What a relief.

We also were welcomed by all the new canvas fully deployed in the cockpit. The new bimini and connector looked great, and Patrick jumped right into installing all the new solar panels on top of the bimini and the dodger. The panels aren’t connected to power yet, but this weekend we should be hooking them all up, and then we’ll get to test out how 600W of solar changes our power game. (Patrick is aiming for cold beer in the fridge 24/7.)

We still had a lot to do before we could leave the dock: rigging the sails, finishing up the final electronics wiring, filling up the diesel tank, putting everything on the boat away…so we got down to work. I went up the rig to feed the lazy jacks through their blocks, and Cecelia and Patrick made sure the halyard kept me up there. Then Patrick and I rigged all the sails.

After lunch at a nearby restaurant in the harbor (we were their first customers on opening day!) and a whole lot more work for the rest of the day, including some mysterious wiring corrections that led to a blown windlass fuse, fixed after much frustration, we made plans to meet up with Steve the electronics guru for a test sail on Saturday morning.

Saturday, once the tide was (sort of!) high enough, we moved over to the fuel dock for a fill-up and then headed out to calibrate all the new instruments.

By mid-afternoon, Steve helped us cast off the dock one more time, and we headed west at last. We motored (wind dead on the nose, typical) for a few hours to Milford, and Cecelia helped us drop the anchor for the night.

Sunday morning started with Cecelia going lazarette diving for our ensign – one of her onboard duties this year will be to raise the ensign each morning and strike it each night at sunset.

More motoring today with the wind again on our nose, and we headed for Oyster Bay to meet up with three other boats for an overnight raft up. What a fun way to celebrate finally being on the water for the season!

After a beautiful sunset to close out the evening (make sure to check out our new page All The Sunsets for more sunset photos), a good meal, and many drinks and laughs, we all slept soundly…after all of us (including the kids!) stayed up a bit later than we should have.

Monday morning, Memorial Day dawned with the wind deciding to turn itself up to 11 (actually, 20!) and our entire raft started dragging. So it was a hasty end to the togetherness, but we were glad to have had it while it lasted.

We sailed (finally, sailing! no photos, though – I wasn’t feeling great and it was pretty windy so didn’t think about photos, unfortunately!) Oestara back to AYC in Rye, and pulled up to the dock. Spent some time at the dock draining and filling our water tanks, loading things from the truck and putting them all away, and catching up with folks who spotted our boat and wanted to say hello and check in on our plans Then we headed out to put her back on the mooring and close her up.

We’re looking forward to moving almost everything else we’ll need for our sailing adventure onto the boat this coming weekend. After this weekend, we won’t see the boat again until we officially move fully onboard later this month…24 days from now, to be exact!