Our 2025 Adventure begins!
We made it! Splash down this morning at 6:20am! Captain and I were up at 1am in Madison to drive to Sturgeon Bay to be ready to roll at 6. We arrived to see Ciara already on her sling and ready to go in the water. We quickly applied a little more bottom paint where she had been resting on her stands for the winter and before we knew it she was in! The ship yard brought folks up from Milwaukee and now they have been moving boats…who knew!? We moved Ciara out of the loading bay and we got to work with our rigging and boat prep. The mast will go in tomorrow. There is a larger sailboat here that has a crane coming in for his mast as the ship yard crane isn’t big enough. Always someone with a bigger mast! But we continue to have one of the largest (if not the largest) boom. Hahahaha.
Kona hopped aboard with no hesitation. She really does seem to know this is her boat. Or at least our boat. Her boat is the Dinghy. One day we will get her boat name put on there “Kona’s Boat.”
Ciara feels really good. Captain did an amazing job with the varnish and the cockpit is really shiny. After eight winters of layering on the varnish she looks like glass. Both of us could hardly stop smiling through all the work yesterday. The boat always goes together and we are amazed how much stuff she can hold, but when we start, she is a mess! I continue to kick myself for the full mini vans worth of stuff I pack, but I remind myself that no one goes anywhere for three months and doesn’t have stuff. I overpack clothes, but like pretending I will change clothes often and/or do laundry. Somehow the sun, fresh air and splashes in lake Michigan seem to keep us from smelling….too much! We did add a new solar shower aboard and will test that out soon! We have three months of food aboard (probably 4 if we actually had too) and yet our fridge and freezer are almost empty making the ability to make ice easier. The only food we need really is fresh stuff along the way to add to our meals, but they don’t need it. I am hopeful the freeze dried experiment of ours works.
So many people stopped by to say hi. A lot of them hangout here it seems. :) It was great to see everyone and we feel very much at home. I made big QR codes of this page to hang while we aren’t around. Captain has wanted a fact sheet about Ciara for so long, so I edited the main page so that the History and Specs are the first thing people see when they come here. They will have to scroll just a little to read me ramble on :D I continue to give out cards and hope folks stop by and see what’s going. Hi new amazing people if so! Folks have asked if we will make videos. There are dreams. There is ADHD. There is a lot to learn. But this will always be a place for people to learn about our boat and maybe about sailing (currently) the Great Lakes!
About 2pm we finished what we needed to get done and we headed out to rent a car and drive to Cedar River to drop my van for the summer. All was well and we were back in Sturgeon Bay by 7. We have been too busy so far to cook, but we did go through an entire bag of my homemade beef jerky. Our friend Scott stopped by for a night cap and tried Captains home barrel aged rum. The few chores we were going to do yet in the evening quickly fell off to “we can do it tomorrow.” I was very tired and we finally got to bed around 11 making it a 22 hour day. Yikes!
Tomorrow we will put in the mast. We have a dinner invite and unsure if we will get off the wall in time to sail there or just stay one more night. There are some tasks we still have to do, unlimited optional tasks and a we need to go buy new batteries as well as one of our house bank batteries is running hot. Ha, so much for saving money once we get to the boat.
