It's Time to Relax.....

as six of us gather down below to reflect on the day's launching. Our hearts are touched by the overwhelming gathering of friends, relatives and the Morris crew....





and by morning, more of us are still talking of how wonderful the previous day was and how exciting our next year will be with so many fabulous adventures ahead of us!















We were further blessed by another beautiful day in Maine, May 2, 2008. The wind calm now.......











increased to 13 -18 knots.....so out we went to see how Barra would respond. She peaked at 9.9 knots!















What a beauty!

The Launching of BARRA - May 1, 2008

A Cozy Home

First Sail

I think my dad likes his new ride!

Today was our first sail! She goes quite well. We were able to get nine knots out of her on a broad reach. The mast tuning is coming along well although I believe that for the breeze we were in today we would prefer more cap shroud tension and a quarter or half inch more head stay. Today we ran into a main that was far to flat and a head stay that was sagging too much. My hunch is that with more cap shroud tension we would get the head stay sag out with using so much back stay which was bending the mast too much and flattening out the main. To do this the rigger said we would need to ease off on the D2s and we were unable with the time to get out a harness. So as we speak the rig is getting closer but not quite where we want her.

If you have been looking closely you may have noticed a list to port. This we have figured is just because of tankage that is not balanced. There is a large port side fuel tank which we did not know if it was full or not. Turns out its the only tank on the boat that is full and it has 94 gallons of fuel in it. That's around 667 lbs or more at 7.1lbs per gallon. After filling the starboard water tank the boat flattened out nicely.

Slowly Coming Together

Barra's first sail was last Friday! Paul and Skip where up form Hall. Steve was on the boat from North Sails and I'm sure the boys from Morris did'nt miss it. All went well and I heard the the boat sails beautifully. The back stay was a little long and the vang needed some adjustment. Linda and Bruce were on the boat all weekend starting to get to know her. Soon Morris will be finishing up and we can start to load gear on.

Launched!

On Monday Morris launched the first boat of the year with a whole new travel life setup. It was also the fist time Barra has felt the water. We were assured that this new lift had been tested because they launched the dock first.

Rig In!

The rigs in!! She splashes in on Monday.