…Well not really!  **BUT** we did fire up the engine and motor away from the dock for the first time since we bought the boat! Jason and I were both overly nervous that something was going to go wrong, but it was fine.  The motor starts easily, the shaft spins freely, and the transmission shifts well.  The engine smokes a little more than I really like, but it’s a diesel and it’s been sitting for a while so it’s expected.

We had to run to the storage building and get the throwable float and then to the hardware store to get the Coast Guard required flares, horn, and other stuff.  So we’re now legal to actually be out in the water!

The boat fired right up and after a sufficient warm up time, we pulled the lines up and started to back away from the spot we were tied to.  The pier is really long and with the wind and current it took us a while to get our big heavy boat away from it. She’s going to be a handful when going to marinas, but hopefully we spend most of our time at anchor anyway!

It was actually a really quick trip out.  We just wanted to test and engine and run it up to make sure it would actually spin up and the boat would go!  I heard the little baby turbocharger whining and the boat scooted forward as quickly as could be expected (which is… slowly… but that’s ok). Then we turned around and headed back to our spot.  We don’t have the dinghy on the boat so if something went wrong we would just drop the anchor and wait for a tow boat. (not fun). Luckily everything went really really well and we finally got to go play in our boat! 🙂

We also got a few other small things done this weekend aside from all of the other really exciting stuff! 😉

Overall, this weekend was complete insanity. We put the boat in the water, reinstalled the mast, and did a test drive! I’m exhausted! 😮 We found a few leaks and some other little things we need to fix, but it went really well! I can’t wait for this fall to head out to the Bahamas! 🙂