On Thursday the 17th, the sails were hung for the first time. Up went the fully battened main and the 135 Genoa. The Genoa is very large, if fact the simple observation, everything on this boat is big, much bigger than our HR34 and well just a little intimidating.
We, John, Brian and myself, moved the boat from Essex to Mystic, CT as she is to be used in a weekend boat show. The first real spring day in the tri-state area with temps in the 70's, gorgeous sunny day. As one would expect the wind was on the nose, however, as we rounded Bartlets reef we were about 35 degrees off the wind of 11 knots. We rolled out the sails..... and flew along at 7 knots with 15 degrees of heel (ok a little current to help as well). Absolutely glorious.
Everything seemed to work, with the normal teething pains like needing a shorter winch handle to operate the in mast furling. The AIS worked a little too well, as apparently it was mis-programed to indicate we were a 700 foot freighter. The USCG was not pleased and supposedly diverted a plane and sent out a boat to check us out (part of home land security policy), though we never saw either and were in contact with them on the radio to clear up the misunderstanding.
We are down to 1 week left to leave Switzerland, Rae Ann has everything well organized so should be smooth, though no doubt a fair bit of work.
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