Well the snow has finally thawed here in MI and summer seems to have arrived quickly this year. Wensday after many hours of painful waxing, buffing, and cleaning we finally put her in the water! As you can see she now has a new name thanks to the folks at West Shore Signs I think it came out great!

After running her for about five minutes at the dock I decided to take a quick ride out and see what the lake looked like. About a mile away from the marina the engine overheated. Thinking its got to be something wrong with the impellor I had just been messing with I played with that let it cool down a bit and tried again, sure enough overheated again.. No problem, it must be the thermostat, take that out & still overheating. Well after the fourth try and several hours out on the water with no cold beer, I saw another boat getting towed in and resigned to the fact that I may have to call the tow boat. I decided to try out the BoatUS towing service sure enough they came right out and took me back to the marina where she sat over the long holiday weekend patiently awaiting someone who knows what they are doing to take a look at her and let me know if I need to buy a new water pump or heat exchanger? Best thing that $358 towing charge was covered in the $58 membership we had, guess that was well worth it!

Looks like we now have an extra week or two to get those sails cleaned & start working on other projects like our leaky hatches and new canvas?

So its winter now...

So apparently we have not done so well with keeping this updated with our first year experience?

Bottom line we had a great summer. My wife & I loved every minute on the water... The kids however felt a bit differently. Belle was ok with it but never excited & pretty much was just happy playing video games down below when we went out. Max was a different story as it seemed every time we got the boat out of the dock he was ready for a nap and was a bit small to take a nap without rolling around a lot which meant no sleeping and one of us was generally stuck holding/managing a frustrated kid.

I'm hoping the 2010 season goes better but I don't see the kids getting excited about it until they are big enough to actually help out more. For now we are planning a two week boat trip this summer. I would like to make Mackinaw Island but doubt we will make it that far with the family?

We still have a number of projects & am planning to replace all three of the large hatches this year, replace the headliner, and reseal all of the windows before putting the boat back in the water this year. Additionally I'm hoping to get the current name off the boat & a new name made to put on as well. Any wagers on how many of these will actually happen?