TOYOT First Water

TOYOT is our new (to us) Bauer 10 sailing/rowing dinghy. It was purchased to enable Marj to recapture the freedom she enjoyed in her childhood while sailing small boats on Half Moon Pond in New Hampshire.

On Saturday, April 11 we launched TOYOT for the first time at Grand Avenue on the Estuary in Alameda. We quickly learned two valuable lessons. First, Paul's poor trailer backing skills led us to roll the trailer down the ramp by hand. Second, water will pore into the boat if the drain plug is not securely screwed in. Here you can see our friends Jim and Harry looking on as Marj bails the boat. You can also see that TOYOT is a classic yacht tender with a spritely shear, a pretty green hull, and teak gunwales, transom, and floorboards.

Once the water was bailed out, Marj raised the sails and set sail across the estuary. As you can see, TOYOT has the performance rig. It has an eighteen foot mast with a jib and a fully battened mainsail. Just in case the winds freshen, she has reef points on her mainsail. Finally, Marj set sail across the Estuary.

She found that with her back issues the best position for her was sitting on the floorboards not on the side seats.

After Marj's first sail it was Paul's turn. We had landed on a pitchfork to make Marj's first landing easy. We wanted to move the boat to the guest dock for some experimenting with a cradle mock up.

The easiest way seemed obvious--short tack up the fairway in the raging 4 knot gale. While sailing up the Estuary in a 10 foot dinghy can not be called short tacking, doing the same in a 60 foot wide fareway certainly deserves that description.

Finally, safe at the dock after having cheated death yet again.