A Quick Shakedown Trip to Boca Grande

Having finally got the boat together, on May 02, Lisa and I decided to take Pearl down to Boca Grande, a local island about 15 mi to the west of Key West. The weather was perfect, sunny, and 85 with the wind from the SE/SSE at 17 – 22 kts which gave us a nice beam reach all the way.

We anchored about a mile north of up the channel by Boca Grande in about 20 ft of calm water. Since the wind was clocking around to the south, we wanted to be as protected as possible from the swells.

This was the first time Lisa and I had taken Pearl out just by ourselves with Harley. It was a great time, as you can see from the look on Lisa’s face despite my having back issues. One of the things we learned on this trip was that Lisa can handle most things on the boat very well, without a lot of interference from me.

The trip back to Key West was the same. A nice beam reach with the winds from the SSW this time. The boat performed flawlessly both outbound and returning to base. The davits (over which I had a mild concern re the dingy swinging around) were unnoticeable for the most part after I added an aft breast line.

Here a quick video of the trip.

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