While we now own a yacht, it is currently undergoing "commissioning" which as I understand it is having the yard carry out all the assembly, checkout, etc. that's needed to get the boat from "factory shipping" mode into "sail away" mode. I'm told it takes about a month (or maybe it was the yard has a month of other boats on the line ahead of us - most likely a combination of both). So we passed the time taking care of some details on our end.
Last year, I was the only one who took the NJ "Safe Boating" course. This is a day-long "throw everything about boating safety at you" type of course... clearly geared for us to cram it in during the 8 hours we had, so we wouldn't forget anything for the test at the end. Surprisingly, this is also the ONLY LEGAL REQUIREMENT to operate a recreational boat (not taking paying customers) of significant size (I think from 12' up to 60+'... quite scary when you think about it).
It is boring as all hell, but John and Vicky had to do it... I came along for moral support (and to take some photos).
Beyond that, we are shopping for boat supplies... here I am trying on foul weather gear at West Marine, which unfortunately wasn't stylish enough for one of us. One of us felt that if it's truly foul weather, you would have trouble seeing the boat, let alone the threads of the person steering, but another one of us is now looking at all the sailing catalogs to find the foul weather gear that presents us in the best shape. As you can tell from my photo below, the gear has to work much harder to shape me up than it does for the other one of us...
So after waiting patiently, this weekend we were taking Vicky's godparents to DC and driving within 5 or 10 miles of the boatyard. We decided to stop by and see the progress. There's no photos from Saturday's trip south... we noticed that they had painted the bottom, but a huge water puddle from the extreme rain the night before surrounded the boat and we opted to avoid walking through the mud.
On Monday for the trip north, we stopped by the boatyard as sunset approached and found the mast all laid out ready to be raised later this week.
Since I knew I would probably never see the top of the mast again (if one of us is going up the mast, I'm guessing Vicky will be in the bosun's chair and I'll be hoisting), I grabbed the camera and took some detail shots. Sorry to bore any actual readers out there, but the next few photos are for us (scroll down for a nice sunset finish).
Vicky found a spot where they missed the bottom paint and I was requested to let the yard know about this issue. I expect they had plans to take care of it once they hoist it up to move it, but I will do my duty.
This is towards the base of the mast... we have a lot to learn... many more lines than the Yacht(ette)!
I wanted to photograph the propeller to see which kind it is... it looks like a RH prop. I'll need to verify that with someone more knowledgeable.
Finally we spent the last few minutes looking around the ship and watching the sun set. If the schedule holds, we should get it sometime next weekend!
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