Further's Maiden Voyage (with her new owners - us!)

On Saturday, May 7 Brady, Big Bardy (Brady's dad) and I sailed Further down from Waukegan to Montrose Harbor. Brady's mom, sister and niece were so kind as to drive us up to the boat so we could sail it down. After having our last breakfast and making one more stop at West Marine we made it to the boat. The boys had to finish setting up our GPS,  FM radio and VHF radio before setting sail. While they were doing this I was able to get some studying in but ran out of materials. My first thought was, I'll just run to CVS and pick up another but then I realized that the boat was our only means of transportation out of the harbor. That moment was a bit of an 'oh crap' moment for me. Brady had been working on the boat since the end of February while I was studying so I didn't have time for this new adventure to sink in until an hour or so before we set sail. And by that time, there was NO turning back.

Brady finishing up the temporary GPS and radio station

It's finished! 

After paying the marina and making our last bathroom stop on land we got all suited up in the foul weather gear we purchased just for this moment and pushed the boat off the dock. Right before we were about to leave, it started to rain... and hard. So Brady and I put on our new snazzy foul weather gear and sailing gloves and Big Bardy threw on his red windbreaker and we untied Further to set sail.

The before picture - still in our temporary dock in Waukegan.

None of us thought our first problem would happen so soon. As I was walking the boat back off the dock, suddenly we were pulling back into our temporary slip and fast. At this point I believe Brady realized that he wasn’t able to get the boat into reverse (reverse is basically a sailboat’s ‘braking system’) and the only thing that stopped us was the dock. We didn’t even leave our temporary slip and we already ‘crashed’ Further into something. This can be seen as both good and bad. Bad news first… our reverse gear was not working normally. First thing to fix when we get Further home, was to adjust the transmission. Good news, well, we already got our first accident out of the way; at least that anxiety is over! Hahaha.

The second try to leave the dock was the charm! We were able to turn the boat properly and were able to motor our way out of the Waukegan Harbor; first obstacle has been hurdled. Success! As Brady taxi'd us out of the harbor Big Bardy and I prepare Further for the open water, pull up her fenders, and tie off the dock lines. 

Captain Brady motoring out of the harbor.
He only looks like he knows what he is doing! ;)

Out on Lake Michigan with Big Bardy at the wheel -
It was cold and rainy.

Once we were out on the open water Big Bardy took over to steer us to Chicago. While motoring we were being tossed around by the 3-5 foot waves (these are the biggest waves we ever encountered). This did not mix well with Brady or me. We both started to feel woozy and I thought that the ride might be smoother if we put the sails up. We took off the sail covers and untied the sails and started to hoist them up. While we were doing this the main halyard kept getting tangled in the spreaders. As Brady was hoisting up the main sail it got caught in the lazy jacks and stuck about half way up,  after one big tug the top little shackle screw on the sail popped off into the water and the top of the sail came loose from the mast.  We had to take down the main sail. While brainstorming on how to jimmy-rig the sail Brady lost his lunch. Once that happened he was a new man and was able to tackle the problem. 

Big Bardy steered us all the
way to Chicago!

Brady not feeling too hot - he lost his
lunch soon after this was taken! 

We came up with two ideas since we didn't have a spare:

  1. remove the bottom sail track and use it to replace the broken one, then reef (reduce the size) our sail

  2. find a replacement screw since we were able to find the shackle 

We went with idea #2. Once again our second attempt at hoisting the sail went very smoothly. Sure enough, our ride became much smoother as soon as our sails went up. We didn't have to do a lot of tuning of the sails to get good speed, we were averaging about 7-8 knots while under sail. Finally things were going smoothly and at that point the rain stopped and the sky started to clear up!

The rain finally stopped and the sky started to clear up.

Finally blue skies ahead!

Big Bardy quickly learned about uncontrolled jibes when he accidentally turned us from starboard to port side. After the first uncontrolled one, we were pros! During one jibe I was wearing cheap gloves and lost the grip on the jib halyard and my pinky got caught in between the line and the winch. After sailing last season and hearing about all of the horror stories, I knew better than to hold onto the sail when I didn't have control. People lose fingers and even hands because of this. After realizing my mistake I quickly yelled for Brady to come and help me get out of my jam, which could have also injured him, but thankfully he was able to free my finger and tie down the sail without losing any body parts. Lesson learned, NEVER hold onto a line you don't have control over.

Sunset on Lake Michigan
BEAUTIFUL!

Just as we were passing Evanston we lost our wind and had to motor the rest of the way in. It was a bit tricky to find the harbor lights (we were looking for a green flashing light that flashed every 3 seconds) because we could see the stop lights from the water, we kept thinking they were the harbor lights we were looking for. As we were pulling into Montrose we took down the sails and prepared the boat for docking. Once again we had problems with the reverse and the first time we tried to dock did not go smoothly. I tied off the back of the boat to the dock but not the front and the front of the boat started to swing away from the dock and almost hit our neighbor's boat! (There weren't many boats on our dock except for our neighbors, just our luck!) The boys finally got the boat into reverse, just in time and we just barely missed hitting the boat next to us and backed out to try re-docking. If we learned anything on this trip it's that the second time is the charm. There were NO problems docking Further the second time around.

First sights of the BIG city!
You can see Chicago far off
in the distance.

After a 5 hour sail we were all ready for the adventure to end and be back on dry land! All in all, for our first time out in our new boat it went really well. We would like to give a BIG shout-out to Brady's dad. Bardy, thanks for joining us on this trip, I don't even want to imagine how many more obstacles we would have had to overcome without you and your extra set of hands. I know after this trip Brady was thinking twice about our boat purchase but deep down we know that it is going to be an amazing summer!

If you are interested in seeing the route of our first sail click here to take you to our map and if you want to see more pictures from our trip click here. We will always have our tracker on during our sails, feel free to 'join' us anytime this summer. To all of our family and friends, you all are always welcome to join us anytime on the water, you don't have to wait for an invitation. We want to share our adventures with all of you! The more the merrier!