Yep, as the pics show I took the boat for a little jaunt earlier.
There were four of us on board, and we ensured we were completed wet geared up, all of us were carrying VHFs clipped to our lifejackets, lights on the jackets, and were generally geared for war! The boat was cleared of anything 'loose', and we had agreed that we would turn back if it looked unmanageable, and in any case wouldn't push our luck staying out too long.
As it happened, Old Spice handled it all beautifully - driving into a head sea she is just so heavy the bows stayed nice and down; it was just hard getting any sort of speed up.
When we turned around and had a following sea (and things did get quite lumpy, with big holes appearing all over the place) Old Spice really proved her mettle. We were surfing down the front of the waves, and whilst I was being really careful anyway, the bows always stayed buoyant - including when we starting surfing at 20+kts with the throttle in neutral
Overall it was a good experience - we took all the usual precautions of passage plans ashore, working out where we'd end up if it all went tits up, checking all the boat kit, and we were all adamant we weren't staying out longer than about the half hour it ended up being!
The three others were naturally quite keen to experience helming in the short, steep, and confusing seas, and we made the call to go back in quite early as we didn't want to push our luck and get into any difficulties.
I am so glad someone got a decent photo!
White Noise
