Relaxing lake time for a change! Also, great changes prove themselves!

Well, it's been fun to buy a new-to-us sailboat but getting the chance to spend time on our "big boat", the 1998 Bayliner 2452 Ciera Express Hardtop, well, that's just relaxing.

We've spent the last year getting her outfitted and prepped for just the occasion we had this weekend. Great cool summer weather, even if it was a little overcast, we had a great time!



Here you can see the boat as we bought her, little dinky swim platform:

Before the new platform and name change

We did the right thing and followed the time honored tradition of calling upon Poseidon and the weather and water gods to allow us the name change to TimeOut!

Then over the winter, we had our yard guy do a bottom job AND add this amazing swim platform from SwimPlatforms.com. It was an expense but this season it's proving to be one of the best of the two expenses we made:

The other expense we made this year was for the larger more robust trim tabs. Not only do they help us control the boat at idle and hull speeds with less tracking, or steerage, they help us get on plane in a matter of seconds!

Everyone seems to really enjoy the platform. We haven't yet added a permanent grill solution and the platform made it really easy to use a cheap, dollar general, $14 grill safely:

So this weekend, we had tenderloin on the grill in a nice little cove that we finally got to stay the night in. Sleeping is a little harder onboard than at our house in town but someday I hope we can redo the berths with thicker more comfortable foam or spring mattresses.

Here you can see everyone enjoying a good book the next day while relaxing onboard:

In the end, unfortunately, we have to go home eventually. This trip, Stacey took the helm and learned more about the throttle, the trim tabs, engine trim and, well... "PUNCHING IT"! She also did a great job docking that day!