I wish I had thought of that before we had cast off from the dock!  As the bow drifted around aimlessly we were in far too tight quarters to put the engine into gear and leaving the dock was an embarrassing and very manual exercise with Heidi using the boat hook to great advantage to avoid us crashing into any of our neighbours.  I was just glad that no-one came on deck to watch (and laugh) at our feeble attempts to clear the dock!

Once out though we now confidently followed the yellow markers out of the Harbour and into a reasonable (2 foot??) swell. 

Our challenge today was to put up the sails for the first time so as we rounded ogden point breakwater we went head to wind and Heidi hoisted the mainsail.  Other than the last few inches, that seemed to go up ok.  We fell back off the wind and for the first time we had some sail power pushing us along.  Well, no drama's so far so we thought that we would risk it, headed up to wind again and unfurled the genoa.  Now with our full suite of sails up, we killed the engine.... And were sailing!  An exhilarating feeling!.  We headed the bow out into the ocean and we were off.  But where were we to go? And, oh my, there are other yachts in the ocean, will we hit them?  Which side should we pass? Where's the wind. Where is that big container ship going????

We sailed on though in a mild panic for what seemed like an age and we watched the harbour get further and further away.  Next thing of course was how to tack - could we remember?  We had been on a lovely reach and sailing well and had plenty of sea room but that still didn't stop me worrying about how big the turning circle on this ship would be but we went around anyway.  The sails flapped, the Genoa came around and... We had successfully tacked and were heading back to the harbour, phew!

Things were going really well now.  We were on another reach but this time running with the tide and the sailing was sweet.  The Harbour looked so close but why should we go in now?  Heidi took the Helm and we went about again.  This time we held the course for what seemed like an eternity! (actually less than 20 minutes) and then we thought we should head back in so tacked again. Hey we were getting good at this.

Heading back in, everything so sweet, we decided we should head out further so tacked again.  In this way we inched down the coast and finally got parallel to Albert Head.  By now though we were starting to get cold feet being so far from the harbour and, with storm clouds over the olympic mountains, we again turned tail and headed back into Victoria.  On the way back Double Time was sailing beautifully and when we checked our track we had actually reached a to speed of almost 9 knots.  Assuming we had some help from the tide!

Then our next challenge came, can we take down the sails without wrecking them!  Heading into wind Heidi took the main halyard and I went to the mast to flake the sail - not the most elegant exercise and we ended up with the Mainsail all over the deck.  I managed to tidy it up though  and then furled the Genoa and, with the engine back on, we puttered back into harbour feeling like old salts!  Just the docking to take care of.  Heidi took us in at extra slow speed got the bow over the dock but then we couldn't get ashore as the stern was still way off so we had a few anxious moments until I could leap across and get the rear mooring line secured.  Once the bow was secured we sat down, breathed a big sigh of relief and celebrated our first sailing trip

The next day, having learnt our lesson about docking we went and bought a couple of much longer mooring lines and worked out a hopefully more elegant means of leaving and arriving  We'll see!!!