New Year, New Motor

We got a 4 hp Nissan motor and, after a few weeks of bad weather, tides too low for clearance, etc., we got out today for a trial run. The motor is much smoother than the old Yamaha and can run on a low idle, which makes departure a little less stressful. It was a nice day on the water with 8-10 knot winds, which were a little more changeable than usual. Despite the good conditions for sailing today, there was hardly anyone out on the water. It sure is great to live in a place where you can sail in January! (*Note to Bill in the comments of the previous post - and welcome - Morro Bay has strong incoming and outgoing currents related to the tides and shallow waters - sailing out of our little marina in the thin buoyed channel with strong currents working against us and the wind usually right in our face would be a problem - even worse would be trying to sail back with dead wind when the current is pushing us backwards).
We are quite happy with our purchase of this boat. It sails well in the harbor, it is very low maintenance, has good speed and gets some admiration from other boaters. Some of the bigger boats on the harbor are rarely ever sailed. I think this is partially because of the rough sea once you get out of the harbor. So the boats are too big to maneuver around and just sail in the harbor and the sea is too rough to really have much fun as a day sailer. We now realize that, barring an unusually calm day on the sea, we will have to confine the Bluenose to the harbor. To do more open water sailing, we really need to head down to the more protected waters in Santa Barbara and charter a bigger boat.
Our next project will probably be a scrape and paint of the hull. We considered doing it ourselves, but both of us have significant time commitments and lack a trailer to pull it out of the water in any case, so we will set up a time to have it painted at the local boat yard. Yes, we will have it painted blue.