ZV officially became ours on Valentine’s Day 2020. I couldn’t have asked for a better gift. We had a 50/50 chance of getting the boat, so it was a surge of surprise and relief when we found out she was ours. The first night I was overcome with emotion. Our sudden acquisition came with a lot of responsibility and required a lot of hard work. We still had to give our 30 day notice at our apartment, move out, downsize by at least 75%, and figure out logistics. I didn’t know how we would manage it all, but I did know we had taken a huge step towards making our dreams come true.
We had to wake up at 4:30am the next morning to move ZV out of the harbor and onto her anchor in the mooring field. Part of this process involved me being on the boat alone, while she was in motion, in the dark. I was terrified. It’s funny looking back on such a trivial moment and recognizing it sparked the beginning of my growth and development as a sailor.
That morning we dropped anchor for my first time. The day was spent settling into our new home. That night, however, was not so idyllic. Austin set an alarm to go off every other hour to check the anchor as it was windy and we didn’t trust our gear yet. Austin, however, hit “stop” instead of “snooze” by mistake.
I woke up to the sound of chain scraping and the boat being jolted to the side. I instantly woke Austin up. Our anchor had dragged and we drifted dangerously close to two other boats. At that point we had got all of the sleep we were going to get that night. We made sure to keep our boat safe and moved as soon as the sun came up. After that, you can bet your ass we got a lot better at dropping anchor!
The Maiden Sailor 