The still nameless Ericson 25

Here’s the latest on Andrew’s boat. I know you’ve all been holding your breath for this update, right? Get some popcorn, because this post is mostly movie clips.

We sailed over to Gig Harbor last Friday to pick up the boat and the whole thing was just about perfect. The weather was warm and windy, which is all one can ask for around here on a summer evening.  I dropped Mike and Andrew off on the dock where the still nameless Ericson 25 was waiting, then stood by on Moonrise while they got everything ready for the maiden voyage. I was pleased to have been able to navigate Moonrise in unknown territory, around lots of expensive boats, and get Mike and Andrew off at the right slip without ‘incident’. Whew!

Out in the passage, they raised the sails for the first time on the little Ericson. You’ll notice the main looks a little wonky. No worries, that’s been adjusted since this video was taken. It looks loads better now. Notice the Viking on the main sail! This is pretty cool because Andrew is a student at Western Washington University, home of the Vikings!

We arranged to have a slip in our marina for a couple of months while we figure out where the boat will be stored when Andrew is in Bellingham at school. The Gods were smiling on this whole situation because as a new boat owner Andrew has a lot to learn and we’d like to be the ones to teach him. A temporary slip was found on the dock behind Moonrise. Turns out to be the exact slip we had for Moonrise when we first moved into that marina a few years back. Andrew’s boat is almost directly behind Moonrise, giving him access to everything we have on our boat, and putting us right there if he needs help. Excellent!

Remember those videos you took of your kids when they were babies? Or that your parents took of you, if you happen to be Tate and Dani, or Vlad and Atilla. You know the ones: Watch while little snookums picks his nose!, Watch while little snookums takes his first steps and whacks himself on the table corner. Watch little snookums sleeping.  Okay. Well watch while big snookums takes his own boat out of the slip alone for the first time. (Now he just backs the boat out of the slip, but he was not sure about it the first time. I love how they toddle first, then they run!) I’m filming from Moonrise. Bear with us. We’re being parents here.  There are a lot more video clips where this came from. At least we’ve progressed from watching him sleep and if this video is not more interesting than watching paint dry, it’s at least mercifully short.

As an aside, I sometimes wonder about the number of photos we take of our kids. These statistics tell the tale: number of photos we have of Moonrise under sail after owning her for 4 years: 2, both taken in the last 3 months.   Number of photos of Andrew’s still nameless boat, under sail, after owning her for less than 1 week: 234,490. Hmmm.

The proverbial sunset sail.

It’s been several days of sailing together, teaching Andrew how to anchor out, and watching while he learns to single-hand the boat. We notice he is falling in love with this boat and it makes our collective hearts swell with pride. This part of our cunning plan is working.

Here’s another stunning video of us stealing Andrew’s wind, talking smack about how much faster our boat is than his boat:

In yet another indication that this was the right boat for Andrew, today a dinghy pretty much fell out of the sky and into my lap. I awoke this morning and the first thought that popped into my mind was that Andrew was planning to sail up to Seattle to see his sister and he doesn’t yet have a dinghy. Pulling Puddler, our dinghy, would take about a knot off his speed, at least. Plus, we like to have Puddler available ourselves. I wanted a dinghy in decent shape and I didn’t want to spend more than about 50$ for it. So I opened Craigslist over coffee. And there it was, posted less than 1 hour before, probably right as I was waking up. By noon we were putting it into the back of Andrew’s car, and it fit perfectly.

So, aside from some odds and ends, he’s pretty much set in terms of learning how to sail his boat and use it to travel to exotic locations such as Seattle and Bellingham. He’s lining up crew so he won’t be alone at first, which relieves our minds. And what about Mike and me? We’ve been sailing a lot, too. Here’s a quick clip of our sail down to Penrose State Park for the 4th of July. We are not real fans of that holiday and like to get away from the noise and crowds. We were the only boat on our side of the park. Perfect. And we had winds gusting to 25 knots on the way down. More perfect.

And while we were there, we had a little adventure. Or rather, Mike had a little adventure and I watched him. Then I had to buy him a present.

The view from the top of the mast is stunning. Plus, I hold Mike’s life in my hands. Not really. He’s actually very safe:

And now, relax to the soothing visuals of fireworks over Commencement Bay. It’ s much more soothing to watch the video than it was being there with hundreds of boats, some unlit and small, all over the bay. What a circus. I can’t wait for the 4th to be on a weekend again, so we can come home the following day and miss the zoo in the bay.