Rare bird - A Beneteau First 260 resource

It's 900 miles from Lake Degray to Minneapolis, and the 5000 lbs, 9 foot wide First 260 was going to prove to be quite the pull. I borrowed a friend's V8 Toyota, and headed down, spending the night in southern Iowa. With me were 4 new tires for the trailer, and a mast lowering system based on one I created for my old First 235. There is no boat moving facilities at Degray, so we were going to be doing ALL the work. And LOTS of things were going to have to line up. Getting the boat on the trailer took much lover than expected. The PO had moved the pads, so I had crawl in the water to look at the pads with a swim mask on to see if they needed adjustment. It took an extra day. But by 5PM we were on the road, heading north. At a gas station in Fort Smith AR, I took this picture. Deep in the Ozarks. People looked at us very strangely. I ended up making it to Jopin MO that night. Not bad at all based on the late start, and driving the boat through the Ozarks at night. It...

April 1st brought us back to Lake Degray, and we were met with 80 degree days and warm water. The very soft wind conditions meant that we spend a lot of the weekend swimming. Not that that was a bad thing. The lake and the area are amazingly beautiful. The next evening the wind came up a bit and we managed to get a kite up. This was an old sym that I found on ebay. It was from a Tartan 27 as is probably 30 years old. But as the future would show, its would serve us well many times. Before we could leave we wanted to try and empty the holding tank. Although we had never used it, it was clear there was 'stuff' in it. Amazingly, the DeGray marina had a pump-up system, though no one that currently worked there had ever seen it in use. With a little bit of messing around, we got it to work. Here we are pulled in at the marina. Wonderful people there. Our last night out, we anchored on the west end of the lake, and watched the sun set in perfect sleeping temperatures...