Mast, boom, 1 sail on

The morning started a bit foggy but no wind so why complain.  

Moving the boat over to the haul out area went easy and the crane showed up on time.  The crew from Severn Yachting Center rigged the mast for the lift and getting it onto the boat.  

Cross County via the Northern Route

Dean needed to go back to the boat and get it ready for it to be put in the water.  So a trip back but this time gave an excuse to visit some old friends thus the trip involved a different route.  Dean left on a Thursday morning from Boise to Billings MT. Had to go through Bozeman and that required a quick stop at the "Pickle Barrel" for a sandwich.  When Dean went to college in Bozeman the Pickle Barrel was a go to place if the cafeteria didn't have "great" food that night.  Made it to Billings and spent time with Scott and Kymm, old college friends that had recently moved from Milwaukee back to Billings.

Up the next day and drove from Billings to Minneapolis to spend the night with Dean's brother Terry and his wife Mary.  Long day but they had dinner and good conversation.  On the drive kept seeing this semi loaded with onions, well maybe it wasn't the same semi but Dean saw a few of them on the trip.

Up early the next day to travel from Minneapolis to outside Chicago where Dean reconnected with a former co-worker Tony and his wife Christina.  They severed a great lunch and  spent time talking about past and future plans.  Left there around 3pm and made it to outside Toledo Ohio and spent the night at a rest stop.  

Up sometime in the morning and headed the rest of the way to Severn Yachting Center where "Charm" is stored on the hard.  Had fog for some of this trip.  She looked good and is wanting to get back into the water.  Will spend the next few days finishing up some projects and on Friday 9/2 its back into the water.

Splash Down

It has been 10 months since "Charm" has been out of the water and it is about time to get her back in.  On 10/2, Friday, she went back in and is loving it.   

Where's the boat

Oh moving to the water

Look it still floats :)

So right now she looks more like a power boat, no mast, it will only be a matter of days until the mast and boom are back on and she will look like a normal sailing catamaran. 

September back to the boat

We had planned on taking a trip in September to make sure the boat had survived the summer and it also gave a good excuse to be at the boat.  We left Boise Friday around noon on the 4th and headed east, well south and then east.  The trip coincided with the start of Labor Day weekend and we saw the affect of that between Ogden Utah and Evanston Wyoming.  The amount of traffic and how slow everyone moved was a worry but after Evanston things thinned and we made good time.  It was a nice day/evening for a drive

Looking good

When Kris, Lee, and Norm went to bring What If from Charleston SC to Bridgeport CT it wasn't a vacation cruise.  There were several incidents with the septic system, finding the bottom of the waterway with the boat bottom, and seeing floating things in the middle of the night were just a few of the travel adventures.  So while they were traveling Dean and Derek created awesome looking shirts so when the boat arrived in New York the shirts were presented.  The crew looked good and from that moment on they and the boat did not any more issues.  Now that is one mighty fine looking captain and crew, you figure out who the captain is.

So thinking ahead the idea of a good looking shirt/logo only seems to make sense to avoid boat issues in the future.  Working on the site Custom Ink we have been trying out different designs and options.  So far we are thinking:

The front has Sailing Vessel Charm identified by name and it's marine number plus we have the nice manta ray cartoon the front and the back has the outline drawing of the manta catamaran.  So if having the shirts do not fix all the potential problems on Charm at least we should look good.  Dean is pushing that all overnight visitors would receive a complementary shirt but we haven't agreed on that.

Scotty I need more power

Well that is what Captain Kirk always said on Star Trek to his engineering chief Scotty Montgomery.  Some how it always seemed that Scotty could work miracles and give more power and make all the repairs in 1/2 the time it would take normal people.  Not sure how he did it but week after week he did.

Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink

Lines from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  A sailor on a becalmed ship, is surrounded by salt water that he cannot drink.

We do not want to have that situation, after all this is suppose to be a pleasure/enjoyable time on the boat and to not worry about water is important.  To make water less of an issue we are looking at desalination water makers for the boat.  The process of taking salt water, pushing it through a membrane and having fresh water come out the other side is a great option to have.  We have all the salt water available around us so all we need is equipment to do the work.