Sea Trial Day!

Yesterday was a very busy day!  We checked out of the Laru Baya Resort (and air  conditioning), and moved on the boat.  At least we dumped our suitcases (all 4 - 50 pound) suitcases on the boat.  We were able to get a ride on a golf cart from the resort to the marina, which saved me a lot of pulling suitcases about 2 blocks, which half of it is gravel!  For some reason, I failed to take any pictures of this event, probably because I was worried that the top suitcase was about to fall off!  It took two trips to get all of our things hauled over to the marina.  Each day we have different challenges that we need to overcome, so this was an easy one. 

We arranged our sea trial, which is the last step in signing the release from Moorings.  They have done an outstanding job in making sure that we are happy.  As always in a boat, we keep finding little things that need to be fixed that we didn't see earlier.  So after we sign the release, then we have to pay for anything that we ask the Moorings to fix.  We have three things left on the list to fix!

A guy named Cricket come over about 1:00, and will take us on our sea trial and orientation.  This will be the first time that I actually sailed on this model, so he will show me all of the features!  So, we are off!  It takes 45 minutes to get out to the ocean, as we are on a lagoon.  It seemed to take forever with the engine running to finally reach the spot to raise the sails.  The pass was a little tricky, so Cricket put some waypoints on the Chart Plotter to help me with the route. 

Cricket and me!

The sea trail went very nice as we had 10 to 18 knots of wind.  We were running about 6 to 7 knora.  We did a couple of tacks and sailed close hauled for a while until we decided to head back into port.  During the cruise, we found a couple of things that needed to be fixed, and the Moorings was quick to come over today and fix!  I will sign the release today, so this will be the last of our free work!  Sorry for the lack of pictures, but we were really focused on the boat!

The next couple of days we will re-provision the boat and sit through one of the Moorings briefing sessions.  This will allow us to know where the easiest places are to go and what the rules of the road are.  Once we do this, we will probably head out to the reefs next week for a couple of days.  I can't wait to get out of the marina and into the islands! 

Me, about to 'ready the main'!