MAGIC Lessons

UM, we have been on our own for a week now.   Our goal for this season was to "swallow" the boat -- essentially to learn and become familiar with Magic as our new cruising home.  And the lessons have been coming fast and furious.  Here are a few of them:

1.  Tie the dinghy up to docks and the davits with at least 2 lines.  In LaPaz, one line parted (at a splice) and without the second line...well, we would have been out our dinghy.   The current can run 2+ knots in LaPaz, so who knows where the dinghy would have landed.  The dinghy is like the all purpose station wagon--used to get around when the boat is at anchor.  An essential piece of gear.   We call our dinghy:  Gun Rock to honor the UC Davis mascot.

2.  We have learned to get all our water toys on and off the boat using lifting bridles and halyards -- so no heavy lifting.  Our toys include:  2 hard shell kayaks, 1 sailing/rowing dinghy, Gun Rock, and the outboard motor.  That is alot of lifting and securing...but we love our toys!

3.  Anchor scope...yup, we dragged anchor the other day.  We had honking winds from the north, then the south, and then the north again.  And we were a bit careless in calculating how much chain was out.   So thank goodness our lesson came with the northern winds -- dragging into deeper water and during daylight.  But it scared us, yum, good.

4.  Leave the VHF radio on.  We have always turned it off when the anchor was down, not wanting to hear the chatter.  But, we missed calls from several nearby boats to advise us we were probably dragging.  Our new best friends from s/v Apolima, actually picked up their anchor to motor over to us and give us the heads up.  That is another lesson:  the cruising community watches out for each other.  They said it was "nothing" just a bit of exercise for the anchor.

5.  Use the GPS anchor alarm when the winds are honking or you are cautious about fetch in an anchorage.  We now know how to do this.

6.  Alan accidentally hit the emergency button on the HAM radio.  It did not generate any emergency signals, etc, but we could not figure out how to clear the emergency.  So we read the totally not well written ICOM radio manual and found the reset button.  I guess we need to be sure we really can send an emergency message in the right situation!

So it has been a busy week -- all these learning moments balance out the fun of being on the water, watching the sea life, trying to catch fish, sailing the boat, and exploring the anchorages.