Inspection and Shake Down

Sunday morning we made it down to the marina in time for the club's annual meeting and blessing of the fleet.  Upon our arrival, we were met with some beautiful blue skies.

The skies, however, changed pretty quickly and we spent most of the day playing around in the cabin waiting out the storms.

This was a good thing because the Coast Guard Auxiliary was doing safety inspections.  The officer was very helpful.  He suggested I check into the fire extinguisher, apparently several of the Kidde ones have been recalled.  Turns out our's has not been but it was an easy thing to check. We passed our safety inspection without a hitch. These safety inspections are a good thing to go through especially with a new boat.  It helps you work through and make sure you have not forgotten anything important.

BB ran into town while we were waiting on the weather and Myles and I had our first lunch aboard.  

Finally, our patience paid off.  A break in the weather arrived and we headed up the river to Lake Michigan for our first trip out on our Mirage! The radar showed one more rainstorm just to the south of our location.  When we headed out into the open lake we could see it passing between us and South Haven.  So we sailed north. What a great decision this turned out to be.  We were able to ride the breeze off the weather front most of the way to Holland.  

North  or 

South

About an hour into our sail the front passed south of us and took along with it all our wind. 

We ended up coming back with the iron genny but overall, we're very happy with our new boat and our first trip out for the season.  Brr, it's still cold up here.

Safe and sound back at the dock.

Myles and I decided it was time to really put the cabin to the test and stayed aboard for the first time. Both of us agree this is the best place to sleep.  To bad for BB, she will have to wait another weekend to sleep aboard she has a cold and decided to go home for the night.

That front hatch is great too.