It Floats!

I am happy to share this long overdue post to let you all know that we did indeed make it into the water in 2022! It's been a whirlwind of a summer, and it's hard to believe how quickly things happened between June - when we didn't have windows or a functioning electrical system - and September, when we hosted overnight guests twice! 

The boat went in the water on August 10. There was a bit of a scare in the morning, when I got a call from the service manager saying there was something wrong with the electrical, but it turned out to be a simple miscommunication regarding battery connections. In any case, after a little stress, things were quickly sorted out. We made it there the next day, and it was quite a surreal experience to FINALLY arrive at this boat in the water. We had almost exclusively known this boat in a warehouse, and also mainly as a construction zone. Seeing it float was almost odd! As always, the boat seemed quite smaller when in the water, in a good way. It feels like we achieved our goal of finding everything we wanted in a "small' package. 

This was, of course, a moment that deserved a toast! I remember we were super tired and a bit overwhelmed at how to even start "moving in", but we still enjoyed the moment. 

Of course, being in the water doesn't mean the work is done. In fact, we found ourselves with QUITE the huge mess that first weekend as we move things into the boat, in addition to all the project stuff that continued being scattered about. 

We've been back at the boat every single weekend (I did go alone once), still making lots of progress on many fronts. We've started work on some of the finishes, which is making the space much nicer to live in. 

A big project that we hired, and which made a big difference, is the new carpet. We ripped out the cabin carpets months ago, and the salon carpet was very worn... So it was very satisfying to have this project completed without much effort on our part (as opposed to pretty much everything else!) While they had to come twice, to fix some things which originally didn't look great, the end result was great!

So we finally have our little cabin in Bayfield, and we are really enjoying the larger living space. We've had a few visitors since. My parents were up from Puerto Rico and were the first of our family or friends to see the boat in the water. They even insisted on putting in a little elbow grease, but overall we had a leisurely weekend with them which forced us into a little bit more enjoyment and a little less hard work. We even caught the last weekend of blueberry picking at one of the local farms.

Our first overnight guests were our besties E and R. They didn't mind the lack of a waste system on the boat, which required a 5 minute uphill walk to the clubhouse bathrooms. That's easy during the day, but not fun when you wake up in the middle of a cold night. We had a fun Bayfield weekend, hiking, doing the town, reading, playing poker in the salon, and dining out. It as an all-leisure weekend, although I did sneak in an hour or so to install our new AIS-enabled VHF on the flybridge. 

Notably, we also took the boat out for the first time! Of course, we have the moment in video:

I was more nervous about this than I probably should have been. It was hard to trust that everything was going to work fine, and I also I had irrational worries about this boat somehow handling substantially different than the Tiara. But the first cruise went without a hitch. And backing into the slip ended up being a piece of cake. The owner of the neighboring boat, seeing us approach, offered to come help us land. Seeing how smoothly it happened, he said "I thought you wanted help docking but maybe you wanted me to come hand you a beer?" After 14 years with the Tiara without putting a scratch on it, I hope for the same success rate with the Tolly. 

Becca's parents were our second overnight guests, and they came for a rainy stay! It was storming or drizzling most of the weekend, but we still had a good time. This boat is not huge, but still, having a salon and two cabins (and an enclosed flybridge) makes it way easier to have guests even in rainy weather. We even found a small weather window to go our for our second-ever cruise on Idilio. This time, I pushed the boat to WOT, and was pleasantly surprised to see the tachometers reach 4200 RPMs. If you recall from our earlier posts, the boat had topped out at 3600 RPMs at sea trial, which had been a cause for concern. It seems like the re-pitching of the props did the trick! 

So that's the general update on things! We are planning on being at the boat the next two weekends, the last two before haul out. And then, another winter and spring in which to make some additional progress, although we are planning on a much more relaxed pace. We may even take a couple months off from the project altogether!