Testing the sails

So she floats, but does she sail?

We finally got to take the Millennium Falcon out on her first voyage since we bought her! There were a lot of nerves, not made better by the fact that our engine sea water intake impeller was the wrong part, so we could only run the engine briefly on the old, failing impeller. But, we needed to test the boat out since we were now jobless and had a weather window to get around the northern coast coming up!

We didn’t want strong winds to test her out, so with the first good weather and a temporary solution to our impeller problem, we headed out of the bay for the first time.

Amazing to have a day trip in perfect weather to test all the sails and other systems. Result: Good enough to go once we installed the last couple of parts we were waiting on. Bonus is that she sails beautifully, barely needing any wind to be able to slip through the water. Time will tell if that becomes an issue at the other end of the wind spectrum, as we only have 2 reefing points in the main.

We didn’t even hit a single iceberg.Read more