Maiden voyage

Yesterday morning we took Painkiller out for our first solo adventure.  The wind was light, the water was calm and our excitement was high.  We missed having Captain Bernie as our dock boy as that task now fell on my side of the to-do list. I jumped onto the dock while Captain Dave had the yacht controller (sorta like a remote control to drive the boat) in hand,  we got the lines off the dock and onto the boat, I jumped back aboard.  David took us off the dock and into the channel without any glitches at all.  It’s a good thing it went off without a hitch as all the people at the fuel dock were watching and when we yelled across to them that it was our maiden voyage, they all started clapping and yahooing.  It was a good feeling!  So off we went at our turtle speed,  dodging the weekend warriors that went zipping by us with their powerful outboard motors.  We put our training to good use as we navigated our way out to bigger waters.  It was very enjoyable and to qualify our excitement, let me share with you a short bit of how we arrived at this point in time. In 1977, David and I had just graduated from the University of Arizona, Bear Down Wildcats, and we were invited to go on a once in a lifetime trip with David’s parents.  They had a Grand Banks 45 and they wanted to take the “Passing Fancy” down to Mexico.  We jumped at the chance to go with them with the thought that we had just graduated from college, had no obligations yet, no job,

The only pic I took while on our Maiden Voyage

 no house, no kids and it was the perfect time for us to take advantage of this opportunity.  Our first leg on the trip was from  San Diego to Ensenada, ending in Manzanillo, Mexico. I fell in love with boating.  We decided that someday we would have our own boat to travel on.  So now, over 40 years later, here we are, taking our maiden voyage on our own boat.

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