1st Charter.... summer 2006

Well...

Donning our new blue blazers and crisy linen pants we held our ASA 101 & 103 certifications firmly in our mits and figured it was time go sailing all by ourselves (very grown up stuff). To get our toes wet Jorgen booked a 33' Beneteau for a long weekend in July 2006 .

We felt that this was a good lithmus test to see if we would really kill each other, not to mention we were 8 weeks away from tying the knot in Dublin, Ireland.

On the way up to Deltaville, we forewarned the charter company of our impending arrival. They proceeded to inform us that our charter, unfortunately, had broken down but it was not a big problem. We were offered a 39' Beneteau instead, at no extra cost. Ouch, this was going to be an interesting to start our first solo sail. We arrived to the boat and it was bleedin' huge, aircraft carrier scale.

We left the slip Saturday morning without mishaps (excellent driving by Jorgen) and headed out to the Rappahannock river. In what seemed like fair conditions we unfurled the main and the jib and absolutely screamed passed a bunch of sailboats motoring in the river. We headed towards the Bay and smoked a couple of more boats. We must have really looked like we knew what we were doing. For about 10 minutes. Until we rounded up violently, followed by a brilliant unitentional heave to - wow we must have looked professional!! Yesus

Anyway, after a swift change of undies, we sailed the rest of the weekend with no major mishaps. until it was time to head to the fuel dock to top up the 2 gallons we used. We came in towards the dock slowly at a 25 degree angle to dock starboard to, thinking "this is just tooooo easy" just as I where to engange reverse to stop the boat and bring the stern in towards the dock. Good time for the throttle cable to break. Interestingly enough it did and the wind made the boat swing 180 degrees for a less than gracefull portside tie up....

We eventually got her fueled up for $8.00, called the charter company and the dude came down to help us get the boat back.

The way to get her back was to have Jorgen manually operate the throttle lever on the diesel fuel pump, Maria acted as go between of commands at the companion way and charter dude on the helm calling the shots.

As you guessed, we did not kill each other, loved the expereince and decided to go look for a small boat to buy- and got married on the way!!