Lesson #1:

Private lessons on her 38' Bayliner, Marilyn is a kick butt woman who bought her FIRST BOAT EVER in October. Yes, I said 38 feet... for her first boat! GOOOOOO MARILYN! So, we're going through all of the things... safety equipment, fuel and oil checks, etc. Then, we leave the dock (perfectly, I might add), make our turn to head out from our row and head to exit the marina. Then..... our hydraulic steering stops responding with the rudder FULL TO STARBOARD. We have ZERO rudder control and are set up to only turn to starboard. In a marina.. . . stay tuned for the rest of the story!

Lesson #2:

As hard as she tried, the rudder still wasn't working properly. So, we went out into the river and performed slow speed maneuvers; MOB, pivot turns, docking and... anchoring. All of our drills went off without a bang until anchoring. We checked to make sure that the windlass went down AND UP before attempting to anchor. However, once the anchor had let out about 100' of rode, the windlass couldn't stop the outlet of chain.... So, manually - by hand - we had to pull back up all 100' of rode. Luckily it was a beautiful sunny day in CA. Sunny and 70 degrees in January! No sweat! Ok, maybe a little sweating happened. Ok, a lot! It was 70 degrees and we had to haul up 100' of anchor chain by hand! Real women sweat. Get used to it! lol Overall a great day on the water!