Sunday June 5, 2011
It’s our boat, because she’s finally back in the water!! Somehow this years transition from on the hard to in the water seemed to go by much quicker than last year but that could be because I spent far far less time on her in 2011 than I did in 2010. I think I made it out to the boat yard a total of six times for hard labor vs the countless times last year. Which means that Matt deserves a big thanks because 90% of the work was done by him.
For our first night back on the boat I wanted nothing but the best and picked up two NY strips for dinner, drizzling in a delicious teriayki glaze along with greek pasta salad and a classy 1 liter bottle of White Zinfandel. It was a little sad making this trip without Mazzii now and the boat seemed so much more empty without her there. And not just because she took up so much space. Our wonderful neighbors on Buen Tiempo happened to be out that night as well and asked where our cute little dog was.  Having to explain the story again partly it felt like salt in the wound and partly I just went into autopilot retelling the same story that I’ve probably told about 50 times now to friends and family.
One of the first things we had to do when we arrived was to flank the sails (or attach them to the mast and furling roller). Luckily winds were light and we didn’t quite have the debacle we did last year where I was almost flung off the boat like some kind of bucking bronco ride. I don’t know why, especially since I had just finished the torture of bottom painting less than a week ago, but for the genoa Matt thought it would be best for me to control the winch. The first half was easy and I was actually quite proud of myself but once there was enough sail up to start flapping in the light breeze it was beginning to take all my strenght to make one full turn. When there was only about one foot left to raise we switched places where he finished in 10 seconds. That’s ok….I loosened it for him.
Dinner was absolutely excellent although we still have a little work to do on figuring out how our grill displaces temperature. Less than 10 minutes on the lowest setting and the outsides were getting black. I forced Matt to pull my off as I still like some pink (red) in the center and I didn’t want to kick off my summer with a well done steak. However, after cutting into the steaks the center was still raw and purple. Back onto the grill they went. Mine came back off after only another two minutes to a perfectly red center while Matt’s still stayed on a little longer and ended up being more red than he wanted, but he didn’t want mine to get cold while I waited for him. So sweet. : ) For the occasion I had pulled out our ‘good’ wine glasses that came with the boat. As I was climing around the cockpit I moved my glass to the side as to get it out of my way. Wouldn’t you know I forgot it was there and while making a wild gesture with my hand it got a good smack. Click…. click…. plop. I guess those don’t float like I thought they would.  This would be the reason why I’m not allowed to have nice things.
*I wasn’t being sarcastic earlier, I really do like those glasses
Not wanting to spend our first night on the boat watching movies like we can do any night at home we sat in the cockpit until the sun went down and turned the sky and water all kinds of brilliant shades of pink and purple. I retired down below before Matt as I was loosing light for my Nook and was also beginning to lose too much body heat. Since he had just installed a wifi antenna on the boat he was happy to stay out there all night long on his laptop cruising the forums. I guess his night wasn’t much different than at home.
In the morning the sun was shining in a cloudless sky and although winds were low we made way for the big lake to drift around all day if nothing else.  It didn’t take long for it to warm up enough for a fleece and yoga pants to turn into a bikini. I can’t say the same for Matt though since he’s always bikini ready.  There wasn’t much to do with the sails because of the lack of wind so while Matt sat back and stared into the horizon I pulled out my notebook to read up on auto and home coverage for the new job I just started. This is how we spent most of the day, me switching reading materials a few times or joining in on the blank gazes over the open water. There were no exciting stories this day, nothing of great interest happening, just two people who missed the water back on it and ready to start another season.
