Splashed!

We got Legacy in the water yesterday afternoon and sailed it from the Hylebos waterway to Gig Harbor.

The commissioning went pretty well. I hired two guys to do the work, Steve Brown and Glenn Cowling who work as "Something Special". Silly name, but these guys are great. They did work for my folks on the Catalina 36, and come highly recommended by many sailors around the Tacoma area. After watching them work, I highly recommend them.

The yard had an opening for the Travellift at 4:00 in the afternoon. By 5:00pm, the backstays were on, the rig tensioned correctly, and we were set. Initially, my wife and I were going to sail it to our slip in Gig Harbor with another couple (our broker and her husband), both avid sailors and friends. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to get away at the last minute as she had another sailboat she had to show.

So, this meant my wife and I would take our maiden voyage on our own. This made my wife a bit nervous as she doesn't have that much sailing experience and I've not had experience with anything larger than our Catalina 36.

The sun was out, it was warm, and their was a nice 10 knot breeze. That is an almost unheard of combination hear in the Puget Sound. We might be cold, sunny and windy, or cold, cloudy and windy, or sunny, warm and dead calm, but never warm, sunny, with a nice sailing breeze. A good omen?

Initially we decided to motor, but after clearing the Hylebos waterway, with the conditions so perfect we decided to unfurl the Genoa. That went smoothly enough and we were sailing about about 5.5 knots under the Genoa alone. The wind was about 13 knots apparent, and we decided to unfurl the main. I've not used a roller furled main before so I knew this would be a bit of a learning curve.

We got the main out and at about the same time the wind picked up to about 15-16 knots apparent. We soon found out what we hadn't secured well enough in the cabin. "Legacy" handled wonderfully. With the 130% Genoa, the helm was nicely balanced. We found that the two of us could easily handle the boat as she is setup.

I then decided to try reefing the main. It didn't go so smoothly. However, I got it done eventually and practiced bringing the main out and in under sail, playing with the loads to get an idea of the best way to do it with the furler. I can see that getting the tensions and angles correct to avoid any folds or creases in the main will be a trick. All in all, it sailed wonderfully.

Getting into my slip was another story. This is a new slip to us and this was the first time we had approached it from the water, in a harbor that I haven't been real familiar with in over 40 years. We are at the inmost end of a long dock. There is a lot less room there than what it looked like when I saw the slip from the dock. It is a starboard tie with a turn to port to bow in to the slip. The wind was from my stern as I ghosted in between the docks. I ended up making my turn too late, being more used to how the 36 will spin. I got the bow in the slip, but the wind was pushing my stern beyond the slip. Unfortunately, there isn't any more room to just back out and come at the slip from the other direction. I figured I was OK and would use the prop-walk to kick my stern to port. Well once again, I was thinking about how my 36 behaved. The 400 has very, very little prop-walk compared to the 36.

it was ugly, but in the end, I didn't damage my boat, the dock, or hit my slip-mates boat to my port. Fortunately, the marina was empty so no-one saw my grand display of docking skills. On the other hand, if there had been someone to toss a line to, it would have gone much smoother.

So today, we will go back out to the boat and start to clean up the aftereffects of a 1000 miles of Interstate travel and a few days in a very dirty yard.