April 10, 2008
Hi Y'all,
Melanie and David Couchman here.
I (Melanie) wanted to send you a quick email and let you know how much I am enjoying the boat! We have been out many times in the past 2 months and yesterday we were in the strongest sustained wind I have been in - 20 kts. It was great fun. The boat handles so well, and especially does well in winds over 15 kts. Dream Sea-ker is so stable. She cut through the 3-4ft seas like a knife through butter, and healed just a little. We actually had her up to 7 kts in those conditions and it was terrific! The Olympic saling teams from all over the world are here in Biscayne Bay training. We had great fun watching all the different classes of boats out on the bay and several times "threaded the needle" by sailing through their field.
Also, about a month ago we were just off of Cape Florida when a storm came up...we hadn't raised our sails yet but the winds picked up to 30 kts. the seas were confused and it was raining so hard we couldn't see the channel markers which were no more than 25 ft in front of us! The radar worked like a charm and we navigated our way perfectly, we didn't even get wet while the rains were beating down!
Last weekend, we invited some folks on our dock to go out for a sail. When we arrived at our slip on Sunday AM there were 7 people waiting for us to take them out. They are all sailors, but have varyiing degrees of experience. They were all impressed and kept "ooing and ahhhing" with all of the "little things" and the big things that are incorporated into Dream Sea-ker.
We had one of our sons and family down this past week. When our 41/2 y/o grandson came aboard he picked the aft berth as his and the "V" berth for his mom and dad. When I asked him where Nana (that's me) and Gramps (that's David) were going to sleep, he said we couldn't sleep because we had to "drive" the boat. He also found "his" pantry (next to the aft berth). When I asked why it was his, he said it's "just my size". Later he asked whether he could go below and "look in his pantry for something to eat"!
As you can tell, we are really enjoying our new toy and I just wanted to say thanks again for all of the beautiful workmanship and solid and reliable engineering that you folks all did to contribute to this boat.
Best wishes, Melanie and David