Moving Uptown

February 20-21: 
This was the type of weather we imagined for Georgia when we left the Minnesota -- 70 degrees, blue sky, lots of sun, mild winds.  Ah! It's finally feels great to be here!  The calm winds and warm temps motivated us to get ready to move Maja from the outer boondocks of the marina into the heart of the action.  Yes, we are moving Uptown! 

Of course, that first meant that we had to learn how to dock the boat by ourselves, a huge FIRST for us.  Fortunately, both Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days for hanging around on the dock -- actually, more like jumping from the boat to the dock, and back again!  We tried out several different configurations of dock lines, and sequences for securing the boat to the dock, before we finally came up with an arrangement that the two of us could handle.  A lot of trial and error - believe me!  It proved to be a good thing that we were docked so far from civilization ... I'm sure several of my expletives would have raised some eyebrows...

This is all so new to us that we sometimes wonder when our 20 yrs of experience on Xanadu will come in handy.  This is our first boat with a diesel motor, so we spent a few attempts just moving the boat in forward and reverse to see how she handled, with the boat still tied to the dock! Diesels have this thing called "prop walk" that you have to take into consideration when approaching the dock in forward or reverse -- prop walk is the direction the prop moves the boat when in gear, which can cause the stern of the boat to move in a direction you never anticipated when putting the boat in reverse. Then we got up our courage to actually leave the dock, motor around and come back into another slip.  Throughout Saturday afternoon, we moved from slip 25 all the way up to slip 10!  WooHoo!

There's nothing like practice practice practice -- it reminded us of lessons we learned long ago (like avoid docking into the wind as that usually means that as soon as you tie the bow spring line on the dock (the mid-ship line), the stern is quickly blown 8 feet from the dock, into the middle of the slip!). After each attempt, we'd convene to the cockpit to discuss what worked well and what we'd better not try again.  The hardest part was figuring the best system for me to handle the 3 lines that needed to be secured to the dock, since Dan needed to be at the helm, dealing with forward and reverse (and that dreaded "prop walk").  . 

Sunday was another beautiful day, but rain was in the forecast so we knew we had to make the big move uptown to Dock 10 today.  After discovering so many ways that we did NOT want to dock the boat on Saturday, today was much more rewarding.  We only had one major misstep when Dan wanted to move the boat closer to the end of the dock, and all I had to do was use the one of the bow lines to pull the boat back about 5 feet ... Dan had the boat in reverse, and I was pulling with ALL my might, but I couldn't budge the boat an inch.  Dan would say PULL, and I would PULL and PULL and PULL, all to no avail.  I was beginning to think that I obviously was too much of a wimp to get a 21,000 lb boat to float backwards when I decided to walk around the front of the boat to see how we were aligned in the slip -- and then I noticed that the boat was still tied to the dock on the far side (something I couldn't see from the side of the boat we were docked!).  Ah, that explains everything!  We had a good laugh over that one ... yes, it's a learning curve!

But moving uptown was so worth it!  We are on Dock 10 now, the same dock as the boat house, so the boaters lounge, shower room and laundry is just a short walk away.  We can see the Suburban from the boat, and we have neighbors!  It's nice to not be so isolated anymore ... although it now takes Dan 5 times longer to get from the car to boathouse to the boat b/c he stops and talks with everyone he meets!  We may still be in the marina, but this definitely feels like progress!!

Georgia is famous for it's nasty "no-see-ems" (aka, tiny little flying bugs), so having a cockpit screen enclosure that keeps them out is a very nice thing to have!