One last shake down cruise

So, we’ve spent the last few days removing every single thing from Holiday, opening every single locker, detail cleaning every single surface in the interior of the boat, and vacuuming/cleaning all the interior cushions. We got that done and began to reload Holiday with organizing her to be our home in mind, as we decided where everything would go. With all that meticulous work, it was definitely time for a little relaxing sail that would serve as a shakedown cruise for a lot of the projects I’ve been completing. Basically what that means is to check and make sure nothing falls off or breaks under the stresses of having the boat out and moving. Our friends Dobe and Kelly came over and we set out into Tampa Bay on a beautiful day.

The sailing was perfect in light winds, and everything held together well as expected. We decided to take a swim in the middle of the bay to cool off, and I also practiced “heaving to,” which I have never done in this boat. Heaving to is a simple maneuver where you set the sails, steering wheel, and position of the boat in a manner that it stops the boat and holds your position more or less. It’s perfect for stopping for lunch or swimming as we did, and it is also a safety tactic in heavy winds or rough seas. It worked, and we had fun swimming around in the perfect water.

After our swim and a few hours of sailing, we decided to head back in. The wind was light and mostly behind us, giving me another chance to try something on Holiday I hadn’t done before. When the wind is light, from the back, and slightly to the side, the main sail shields the head sail from the wind causing a loss of speed and the head sail to annoyingly flop around. You can just roll it in and go real slow or bring all the sails in and fire up the motor, but we also have a large spinnaker/whisker pole mounted on deck that can help. It’s just been laying up there on deck all this time. Instead of only stubbing my toe on it, I figured it was time to learn to use it. So we tied some lines to it, hoisted it up, and “poled out” the head sail. It worked perfectly actually. By holding the larger head sail in place, the flopping stopped, and it was always ready to catch the wind (instead of flopping in and out). That doubled our speed and Dobe took a turn sailing and brought us back to the Intracoastal. It was an awesome day with great friends. Holiday performed great, and we learned/practiced a few new tricks for the future

Next on the agenda will be continuing to load the boat, a final provisioning trip to the grocery store, and taking our cars up to Georgia to be sold. About the time Hurricane Matthew has passed us to the north, we should be ready to take off!