When we purchased Seas The Day (315), the first day with her was a bit of a celebration. We met Brian at the fuel dock, there was a big bow on her, we had some time for photos, some snacks on board and finally everyone broke everything down and Captain Gary had his orientation. Fortunately and unfortunately, we had guests along and we ended up with a quick sail along the Delaware River, and maybe a couple of hours going over the boat.
There was NO WAY we were ready to take ownership and our first trip out a week later was nerve wracking. We got through it and obviously succeeded with the boat, and I should note that the orientation was much more than competing dealers were offering at the time.
A couple of things have happened with this purchase of Seas The Day (425). First, Winters Sailing has increased the orientation to two days rather than a couple of hours. Also, Vicky is in China. Since she is less interested in how the various mechanical systems work, we decided to split the "opening day" ceremonies into two parts. The first two - Orientation and the Delivery Trip - I will do with Capt. Gary. When Vicky gets back from China, we will have the celebration.
I met Seas The Day (425) at the Winters fuel dock...
The anchor clearly needed to be installed, but otherwise she was looking great. I assume they'll clean her up to Vicky's standards for the celebration.
Of special note is her foredeck cushion. I guess I've lost that argument (that people shouldn't be on the foredeck when underway).
The new lettering looks great!
So with very little fanfare, we started in. The first order of business was updating the firmware. Seas The Day is "smart and connected" (I may have heard that before). New to this boat is the ability to do a firmware update over WiFi. One of my pet peeves at work is customers who refuse to do firmware updates and I resolved not to be one of those customers. So I set up my WiFi hotspot and connected and let the updates churn for the next hour or so.
While the updates were progressing, we went below and started opening all the floor hatches, under seating compartments and finding all the various mechanical items.
Please note that many of the photos to follow are for my future reference. Feel free to skip to the sailing photos farther down.
The depth and speed transducer.
The switch for the thruster & breaker for the windless.
How to program the AC.
The genset panel
The water and waste tank gauges
(no more guessing and sh!t eruptions)
A close look at the forward AC panel.
A couple of views into the bilge
(which has become much more complicated)
The refrigeration unit for the in-counter fridge/freezer
The fuel shut offs
The forward AC unit and the screen that must be cleaned
(Note: We were unable to figure out how to access the aft AC unit.)
The switch and inverter for the TV
(Note when I want to switch from the mast antenna to the cable box, this is what I'll forget about.)
Control panel for the fridge/freezer in the counter
We also noted some minor issues... a missing latch plate
He showed me how to lower the table if we have more than two overnight guests.
We took a break and Brian snapped a couple of photos of me on-board.
The engine
The emergency engine shut-off
Oil dipstick (hard to see at the bottom)
In case of engine room fire, we're supposed to put a fire extinguisher into this port to avoid back drafts.
A LOT of through hulls (holes in the boat for water to pass through).
The back of the engine
(I missed photos of the genset and water heater, as well as many other items.)
It looks kind of beautiful now, but I had to pass all these boats without hitting them then back it into one of the last slips. Somehow I did it.
After unloading everything, it looked more like our boat typically does.
Since it was dark out, I set about trying some of the exterior lights. The cockpit lights lit it up like a party and were immediately turned off. The remote to control these was one of the ones without batteries.
The second day started out with me trapped on board! I could not get the hatch opened. I knew Gary stayed on the marina grounds so I wasn't worried and right before I called him to rescue me, it opened. After a brief encounter with a high strung marina dog (which made me a bit high strung... we eventually agreed to ignore each other before either of us bit the other), I went for breakfast and finally found some batteries.
When Gary returned for the day, I told him about the latch and he asked me to demonstrate. You guessed it, we reenacted that old comedy routine when once latched, I couldn't open it - and neither could he! I was about to suggest he call his girlfriend to come rescue us when he mentioned that he'd have to use the escape hatch. Oh, we have an escape hatch. He then demonstrated how to climb out (which is something I'm not capable of at my current fitness level). We agreed that the hatch was an item to get fixed.
On the second day we started out by taking down the jib (foresail). There was a problem with how the spinnaker halyard and jib were entwined at the top of the mast. There are no photos from this operation, but I did manage to capture a video of how Gary used the two winches to transfer the effort to the one electric winch Seas The Day has.
The rest of the morning was taking her out for some more orientation on the Delaware river. We did encounter one large ship (which let me see how the radio's AIS feature worked). We turned to follow them down and watch the bridge opening. She maneuvered beautifully though I had a bit of trouble with the "throttle by wire" executing smooth speed changes.
A pair of range lights
As we brought her in, one of Capt. Gary's friends snapped photos of us and sent them to Gary.
The day finished by sitting in the AC comfort and going through a list of little things for Brian and the staff to get sorted. The one BIG thing was the latch. Then I closed her up and headed south.
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