Finally at Island Cove

We finally got to take our boat home! Friday afternoon I dropped Dan off at Hideaway Harbor at the boat. He and our salesman, Ken George brought the boat over to Island Cove. I drove the long way around to meet them there. With Bridge view closed it takes a bit longer to get from the south side of the Clinton River to the north side.

Ken stayed with us for bit and we had a few celebratory drinks together. After Dan took him back to his car we had our first dinner on the boat. We reconfigured all of the lines and made sure it was secure and then headed on home for the evening. We would have liked to spend the night but we needed to take care of a few things at home.

Saturday morning we did some home chores and then packed up and went on out to the boat. We transferred a few more things from the old boat to the new and I stowed everything away. We worked on our older Carver 356 for a few hours. It is still sitting up on shore waiting to go into the water next Thursday. Once Dan "summerizes" it; we'll take it over to the brokerage. We removed all the shrink wrap and put up all of the canvas. Cleaned up all the mess from that and decided to go for a ride on the new boat.

We took the boat over to Belle Maer Harbor, Duffy's gas dock is there and is open for the season and ready to do business. Our boat came with only 1/4 tanks of fuel. It holds 330 gallons. We put in 233 gallons at $2.40. We use diesel fuel on this boat; our old one took gas. The gas price on Saturday was $2.70. We also had Duffy's empty our waste tanks from the heads and do a bleach flush.

After we filled up we took a little ride and then anchored across the lake from our marina. We had lunch and did a few odds and ends and just enjoyed floating. We got to try out all of our systems and make sure everything worked. I wish I could say that it did; but our sync gage still is not functioning. Dan has to make another phone call on Monday.

We spent the night Saturday night on the boat. It was an absolutely gorgeous day on Saturday, warm, sunny and calm. It turned kind of ugly about midnight. The wind kicked up and the lake was really rocking and rolling. Dan ended up having to get up in the middle of the night and readjust lines to keep us from banging against the dock. The water was so riled up that we heard wave slap all night long. But it was nice waking up on the water. : )

We had a nasty surprise on Sunday morning. Dan had left his jeans next to the bed on the floor and when he went to put them on they were wet. Our "fixed" hot water tank is leaking again. That will be part of the phone call on Monday as well. Sigh.

We had a nice day today. Several marina vistors stopped to see the boat, Sam and Claudia, Keith and Denise and Paul Elias. Sam said to Dan up on the boardwalk, "Your boat looks so much bigger this year. I guess it's because there are no other boats in the water to compare it to." Dan laughed and said, "that's because it's not the same boat".

Dan worked on getting the 356 ready to launch on Thursday and I did some more cleaning and organizing on the 396. We were ready to head for home by 6:00. I'm tired now; but happy that we had a very productive weekend.