After 2 cancellations - one due to the outdrive trim pump failure, and the other due to weather -  launch day finally came, June 1, 2013.

I spent the morning doing some last minute preparations and cleaning as well as running the engines for a few minutes.  The boat hauler arrived around 1:30 PM and loaded up the boat with his fancy hydraulic trailer.  Once loaded up, it was off to the launch ramp a few miles away.

There is a more local ramp, but the grade of it is very shallow and not suitable for launching bigger boats.  so, the boat hauler preferred to launch at the next closer ramp, which is a lot steeper.

Here are a couple of pictures backing towards the ramp and in the water, tied up to the pier.  I let the engines run for a while, which allowed some time to raise the bimini, check the bilge and get ready to head out to our local harbor, 7 miles away.

The Bay was a bit choppy and I noticed immediately the difference in ride from our previous boat a F-242SS.   Not as good in the chop. . . oh well.

Anyway, I gradually increased the throttles from a fast idle up to about 2200 RPM, which was relatively slow.  However the boat came up on plane despite the low speed and we made our way up to about 23 mph on the GPS.  The old fashion pressure speedometer also worked, which was an added bonus.  Those things usually fail quite easily, but I had checked it during the Spring preparations and it seemed to be good.

We managed to come down pretty hard off a wave at one point and the doors to the wet bar popped open.  So, after closing things back up, we progressed at a slower speed, but made it to our harbor in good order.

Here are a few pictures below of the boat in the harbor, at the dock and tied up to its mooring.

The next day, it was really windy, so we kept the boat in the harbor.  We went over into the ‘south basin’ and anchored off of the inlet for a couple of hours.  Then headed back to the dock and then the mooring.

There were a couple of issues with the starboard engine that needed attention, but not show stoppers at that point.  The temperature gauge seemed to be reading incorrectly and the engine seemed to be loosing a bit of coolant.  So, I needed to check those things out and hopefully get them resolved

On our first day out on the boat, I quickly realized that this boat really earns its stripes at the destination.  The space and amenities onboard are great.

So, it looks like this boat will do the beaching and boating thing just fine.