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ForeverDes · 30-05-2015, 15:37

Hey all,

Today was the kids and my first sail on our own boat

. We've owned our blue West Wight Potter 19 for a couple weeks now, but this was our first chance to get the boat on the water.

Everything went pretty well, no major mishaps getting to, on, or returning from the lake.

I did forget the windex so we had to interpret the wind, and I'm sure we didn't do as well as we could have. Near as I can tell from local weather reports it was 8-12 mph with gusts of 17 or so.

Thunderstorms were moving through the area, but we never got hit by any, other than very very light sprinkles as we finished packing up.

It took about 45 minutes to rig when we got there. Mast up 3 times because we forgot to untie the main halyard, and then the back stay was wrapped around something. Otherwise easy as could be.

Launching went very well too. My temporary outboard bracket was a bust though, as I couldn't unwind the winch with it in place. No big problem, I just need to redo it with square u bolts instead of the wooden backing plate I used. The kids did well pulling the boat from the trailer to the dock and holding it as I parked the trailer. I fumbled a bit with the outboard as we got going, but within an hour of arriving we were under way on sail power, tacking into the southwest wind and making decent progress.

We Pottered around for a couple hours, then decided it was lunch time. We brought a cooler full of food, which doubled as our companionway steps, and are much much easier on everyone, especially the dog. We also found it was a great place for the kids to stand and reach across the cabin roof to grab lines or whatnot.

Anyway, we were doing well enough at sailing we decided to forgo the picnic supplies and treat ourselves to lunch at Ainsley's Cafe at Kent's Harbor Marina. Dropping sails went like clockwork and I'm quite sure anyone watching had no idea it was our first time doing so!

I started the outboard to maneuver into the courtesy dock, and my son and oldest daughter stepped smartly to the dock to tie us off, again, with no troubles.

We left the dog in the boat, and bungeed the hatch closed with the top slid open since he has a bad habit of following me whenever he can.

Lunch was great, and afterwards we had a much easier time running with the wind back to our marina. We slipped past the ramp on the way in and anchored in about 5 feet of water for a nice swim. I jumped back into the boat after about 30 minutes and checked the storm front moving in.

Since the storms were about an hour away we decided we'd had enough sailing for the day, and sadly loaded back up before the weather turned.

We could have stayed the night on the boat, but I'm new enough at anchoring that I was nervous about trusting the fluke style anchor we have if something big blew up, which is possible. Add to that tomorrow calls for much cooler weather and rain possible any time at all and we made the decision that it would be better to end a great first day on a good note and not press our luck.

Still, everyone is excited about camping on the boat, so an over night or two is in the plans for this summer.

I was a bit distracted and only took a few pics and just one video. I hope to do better on that front next time, but for now here's what I have.