Back in the water!!!

On last Thursday I received a call from Schooner Creek Boatworks, "Terry, your new rudder just walked in."  

I immediately replied, "Wow you guys are good, you can put legs on a rudder and have it walk around."

"No," they replied, "a guy in a brown suit was carrying it."

Eric over at Schooner creek assured me that I would be in the water by Friday afternoon.   He kept his promise, and the whole thing was under budget too.

I managed to get there in time to see her being test fitted and splashing into the water.

Here's the rudder being test fitted

Once the test fitting was done the rudder was hung and bolted on.  Here's a side and rear view of the rudder while still on the jacks.

Rear view of the rudder

Side view of the rudder

With the rudder hung, the tractor lift moved in and dropped her back into the river.

S/V NiSe making her splash back into the river

Hanging on with the new rudder

One last step was to mount the new flag halyard, which was done by a fellow Irish American....

New flag halyard installation

On Saturday we took her out under spinnaker, with about 6 knots of wind. The winds were out of the northwest, with a westerly current of 1.5 knots.  After the spinnaker when up my wife when down to take a nap in the cabin.  The new rudder was perfectly balanced.  Running against the current with a wind 15 degrees off to the starboard side of the transom, I lifted my hands off the wheel, and she sailed perfectly straight for 35 minutes before I had to jibe, running out of river on the Washington side of the Columbia.  No weather helm whatsoever.  

I noticed too the boat turned much easier than before so coming into the slip was so much easier.   Of all the things I have replaced on the boat, the new rudder by Rudder Craft certainly made the biggest performance improvement.

While waiting for the rudder....

It seems like the boat has been in the yard forever.  The skeg has now been repaired, see the photos below.

And of course the new rub rail installed......

The grey looks nice with the black color scheme and the red trim lines.  But we've gotten bored so we decided to take to the water in smaller craft.  We loaded our paddle boards on the roof and went out last night going about 1/2 a mile around the marina.

 Charing took off, standing and moving fast.  I was too scared of falling off into the Columbia's murky water so stayed on my knees the entire time.

Here she is standing running around the marina.

But her smile is what gets me every time....

So while we wait, we've been paddling around leaving behind nothing but wake (albeit really small).