Ben has a little bit of prep work before we can put the rudder in. The wind has died a little bit, but it's still choppy water and gusty sometimes. The big wind blew through Moorea as well as Tahiti and Set Me Free's bimini blew up, again. Ben had already fixed one part, which was the part that stayed together. So Joe is trying to track down some screws to use in place of the toggle fasteners that attach the bimini to the dodger.
Since they're anchored pretty close I decided to take some screws over to practice driving the dinghy in worse weather than usual. Ben simply told me not to let the bow come up too much--if the wind caught it I could easily flip. Thanks for the reassurance.
I got the motor started all right (one pull!) but had some trouble finding a good throttle level in the chop and gusts. There was one instant where I was sure I'd flipped it but managed to jump to the front of the dinghy and bring the bow down. Of course that meant I'd let go of tiller and had to jump back there and try to get back on course.
A couple more circles around Kyanos and I had a system down well enough to get to Set Me Free. I'm sure he was laughing inside, but Joe coached me with where to steer to end up at their swim deck. Getting back to Kyanos was a piece of cake--point at the bow and let the wind take the dinghy to the stern. Whew.
Ben confessed later that he saw me start to flip and ran below so he didn't have to watch it. But it all turned out...
If it's calm enough tomorrow we'll throw the rudder in! The dudes on Dragonsbane offered to help since they have dive gear and they're both pretty muscley dudes:
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