Practice Makes Perfect

One of the many buoys in the lake

Two Sundays ago was the first day we took the boat out since the 'accidents' with the main sail and docking occurred. We were very nervous to take Further out and unfortunately we let our nerves get the better of us. Sometimes it's hard to remember that you get a clean slate with every new day when the not-so-good days are fresh in our memories. While backing up out of our slip to head off for our first sail since our infamous incident, we once again had trouble when backing out of the slip. Unfortunately this did NOT help our confidence. Not at all.

Coming into the harbor. There are a
LOT of obstacles in here!

This brings us to yet another lesson... when Further is in reverse the bow of the boat swings to the RIGHT because of the rotation of the propeller. I swear, there's NEVER a dull moment out here! Thank goodness we both love these two things in life, learning and adventures!

Elaine is not impressed with our
newly acquired skills

Once we were out on the lake things started to look up, finally. I'm not sure if our confidences or relationship would have been able to handle any more mishaps. (I kid! ;)) Instead of going on a sail we decided to practice our docking skills. How might one go about doing this not in the dock and in the middle of the lake? Great question. It's a bit tricker practicing out in the lake and not in the dock, since you have the waves pushing you around more and more wind to deal with (you aren't in the safety of the harbor). Basically you practice docking, and tracking a passenger who has gone overboard, by throwing a life jacket in the water or finding a buoy already in the water and using either of those things as your 'dock'. We both have spent a few hours over a couple of days doing circles around one particular buoy located just northeast of Montrose Harbor (I think other boats think we are a bit crazy when they pass us) and I have to say that we think that this is helping us with our docking skills. Not only that but we are getting a better feel how Further handles under both motor and sail.

The red arrow marks where our dock is located

Relaxing after a long day of practicing

Since we have began our crash course in boat handling we have noticed we aren't half bad at this whole docking game. Not to brag but there have now been a handful of times that we have successfully docked Further perfectly! We are slowly becoming a well oiled machine. So much so that we actually impressed one of our neighbors. He ran over to help us dock when he saw us come into our slip but then backed off when he saw that we were able to handle it so gracefully by ourselves! We defiantly gave a few high fives while cleaning up the boat that day, we were really pumped. It shows that practice really does make perfect. It is a great feeling and we can't wait to show off our new skills to the neighbors who helped us guide in Further when we banged her on the corner of the dock. They are going to be impressed! Hopefully we can continue this good streak for the rest of the season!