After 6 months of maintenance efforts to get Tides Inn ready to cruise again, its time for some sea trials. We need to spend time afloat checking out all the systems and see what is going to break before heading south for the next 6 months.
Hurricane Florence provided a good opportunity to spend several days at sea to test the boat's readiness to head off for several months. Our marina requires the larger boats to vacant the marina for named storms heading our way so we had to leave the marina. Good news was that Florence stayed down to the south and we only saw 25-35kts of wind and only about 1ft of waves in the protected area where we anchor. We had to leave the marina on Wednesday (storm arriving Thursday night) and we waited for the winds and water levels to return to normal before returning - so came back on the next Monday - giving us 6 days at sea.
The best result of spending 6 days afloat was it provided the time necessary to train our Lab Rivah to go potty on the boat. Just like our previous Lab, she took about 3 days of holding it before she had to go and learned her potty spot is on a rug on the bow. By the 6th day, she had the routine down and even asked to go forward when necessary. She like the wind blowing over her, but not when she is trying to do her business.
We had one full day of rainy, windy weather but the rest of the six days was relatively sunny but breezy.
All systems are working and we experienced no significant problems during the week. We have been out in the Chesapeake overnight two more times since Florence and it looks like the boat is ready to head south. Now we just have to get me ready to head south. Heart procedure scheduled for 17 Oct.
