Back on the water!

That stop/start at the top was waiting
for a bridge to open.

After 7 weeks of not going anywhere we finally got inQuest underway. On her maiden voyage with us as owners, we took her farther than she'd traveled in the lat 10 years with her previous owners. She did just fine.

Longer day than we liked, nearly 10 hours. Given we were in a whole new boat (with whole new boat issues) I was exhausted when we arrived.

New boat issues: 

#1 - we discovered our water pump is broken. Funnily, we had exactly this same problem with one of our RVs. The unit itself has a small leak so it can't keep pressure. So, it runs all the time. Then overheats. Then shuts itself off because it's overheated. Solution (until we can get another one in Punta Gorda): turn it off when not in use. Which works fine. Besides, after our gulf crossing where we lost all our fresh water due to rough seas, turning the pump off while in transit is not a bad idea.

Crazy crab races!

#2 - our depth warning kept going off, even though we were in decent waters (decent around here is 6 feet). Turns out it was set to 10 feet. Russ fixed that on the fly.

#3 - a maintenance alarm went off, scaring me half to death. It turned out to be essentially an enthusiastic "time for service" notification. We adjusted it too, having just done one.


#4 - we have a new radar and its default setting showed everything in bright red. That made it hard to see moving things (also in red) and, in general, was very annoying. Made it look like we were about to collide with everything. Russ modified the info to be more subtle. Which is a good thing, since as I type this (the next morning) we're staring out at a decent fog. Gonna give this bad boy a good test.

The helm. And the fog.

Smaller issued include captain chair adjustments, rattling windows, adjusting various displays (rear view, aqua maps, navionics...) And I'm sure more will pop up soon.

But we made it safe and sound, met our friends of As You Wish and About Time, and all of us enjoyed the Hermit Crab Races on Captiva Island.