The Red Herring, two sails up, first time ever

 Cue the boat music:

https://youtu.be/0iIAHTmnujU

Wow what a cracking day....

On Sunday night Alex and I slept on the Red Herring and practiced tying bowline knots upon waking up. Alex says before sleeping also. The next morning we moved the Red Herring under motor to my mooring from its usual mooring which is actually the seller's mooring. 

From there we raised the topsail for the first time. Some postings ago I mentioned an extremely dopey Tom Hanks movie, the airport or something, and how the hooks (are called hanks) on the clew or leech (can't remember which but it's the front side) of the sail. These hanks hook onto the front shroud with like ten hooks (hanks).

So we hooked the hanks on, Alex and I and the appropriate halyard hook on the eyelet and tied our bowline knots on another eyelet (I was super strong in trigonometry in school). Anyway it turned out we did it upside down. So we fixed that, raised the mainsail and motored a little way into the broad swathe of water that constitutes Pittwater and off we went.

(More boat music)

https://youtu.be/VaFcg2zR2TU

There's a helluva lot more speed to collect with two sails on and if the wind is right you're really moving. It's extremely pleasant. Imagine instead of Genghis Khan watching your enemies dying everywhere around you you're just a simple Benji enjoying your boat like crazy.

Or not. Knot. Anyway the girls left home around an hour later, went shopping for some food and rode on down to a nearby wharf a few knots away, so like a couple hours later I'm pulling in to do my first wharf docking without any serious help, apart from my son who's 9 and is pretty helpful. Horrendously I had tied the knapsack baseball base looking fenders too high up and they provided me basically zero protection from banging into the wharf. Perhaps miraculously, it appears the Red Herring suffered no serious damages and I pulled off a stunningly flawless maneuver with seeming mastery and panache. 

More relevant boat music:

https://youtu.be/xQ9X8q_JKEw

The girls stepped on easily, las dos hijas and they mom. Very convenient for them as they'd just arrived. I think I could have done even better avoiding banging the dock by jumping onto shore and manhandling the boat with more aplomb and mastery but anyway I pulled off a beautiful maneuver and the girls stepped on for the first time with they momma (they'd both stepped on there at that wharf some weeks ago when I had some help from a more experienced sailor buddy, without they momma), as if it were nothing (previously the threesome had only climbed on from a little mini boat/kayak. Really the fenders weren't hanging low enough and it was a blunder. But all's well that ends well.

We caught tremendous gusts after that and were really racing along towards the ocean at a real clip. What a great day! I love sailing! They're going to play Shakespeare's 'much ado about nothing' at the local sailing club where we moored after all that, the Avalon sailing club, in two weekends time, actual players I believe.

Also a boat had sunk there today out front of said sailing club. Barely two yards from the bow on were sticking out of the water like an iceberg. I'm perplexed and nonplussed by it. 

Well we really dodged a bullet at that wharf basically without any fender protection. Amazing.