No, I’m not talking about getting married. We already did that. And we had a very nice wedding night as well, so that’s not it either.
No, I’m talking about taking out boat out sailing. We originally had asked Mark to come along (but he was nowhere to be found) and have a look at the engine, because I suspected that it wouldn’t just work. And I was right. My guess is water in the carburettor, because it starts good and runs fine until you try to put it in idle, even after some warm-up time. Long before it hits idle it just dies. A bit of throttle and a pull on the starter rope has it going again, but it makes it so difficult to get the gears in when you have to do it at above idle.
Just when we were about to give up one of our boat neighbors, Greg, asked if we needed to borrow an engine. He had two extra, one 2 hp and one 8 hp. Although the 8 was more equal to what we have I opted for the 2 hp, simply because the weight. Greg brought it over in his dinghy, and we were ready to go.
Denice turned out to be a great sailor, 
although this was her first outing with a sailboat. The rather small engine meant that we set sails pretty early, and she turned out to be a natural at the helm. Probably better than me. We only sailed out to Hat Island and then turned around, but that ws still a few hours under sail. It was a great feeling.
I found a ripped seam in the foresail that need to get fixed, and the engine needs to be repaired as well, but the first week-end of summer we were on the water. Yay!