Next Day

I am slowly getting this down. This was weeks ago. It was a big day for me, though...seems all very fresh in my mind-butter.

On my way to work, Tuesday January 15, I mentioned to Stace that I wasn't sure when or if Don's Boat Transport would call. But if they did, did she want to come along, and the answer was a fervent "YES!" which to me was quite gratifying. I am happy that she is bonding with the boat. Most of these huge boat projects have a reputation for outlasting both pets and girls. Me, I want my boat AND my wife. I overheard a conversation at the last wooden boat show I went to...the guy walked up and said, "How many years and how many marriages?" What followed was rueful. I don't want to be one of those.

I went to work, and at 9:30 AM, Rick, the dude who stood me up the day before, calls. And says how about thursday? I am still seething from the previous day, and I answer that thursday won't work for me because I am now paying $XXX a day for moorage. I expect a battle, and he goes "fair enough. I'll bump today's guy to thursday. How does 12:30 sound?"

Wow. Ok. Me first? That only happens when I pay extra or when we are cliff diving (ya, right.) I phoned Stacey and said be ready at 11:00 and she said yay. Thankfully, my boss Jim is an upright and understanding guy...and besides, this is January in the motorcycle business. And after dithering about the shop for an hour, I leave to get Stacey. We jump in the car, the sun is shining, and it feels like a road trip! Let's drive to Texas! Whee! Instead, we drive to Extreme Pita in Langford to fuel up, where we hear about the latest labour crunch. Then we munch our pitas on the way up the Malahat to the marina. Jumping out of the car, the sun is still shining, and I start snapping pictures of my beautiful girl with my boat, and it's almost 12:00 when the boat truck shows up early! He scoots it to the water, leaps out with a smile and a "Hi! I'm Rick!"


I feel like I'm on the Truman Show or something. He surveys my little boat and explains how the trailer works, making it seem like this could take quite a while.

Then he backed the trailer up, pushed the boat onto the trailer, and pulled the boat halfway out! Swoop! Halfway because he wanted to make sure the keel was on the crosspiece. It was, so he pulled it right up, and I got my first look at the bottom!

But all I could see was mussels. No wonder the bitch wouldn't tack! She had 80 lbs of mussels on her rudder! It was a miracle she sailed at all with all that macro-fur!

We scraped a few mussels off to allow the trailer pads to actually contact the hull. Rick had big tie-down straps for the boat, and I went to the office to settle up for the last day of moorage. Stacey arranged to meet Rick on Gillespie road, and we'd lead him up to our place. We left perhaps 2 minutes after he did, and we never caught up to him! I was driving like I was being chased by banshees, too! We saw him at the appointed place, and then he drove Gillespie like he was driving an MGB instead of a rig towing a 70 year old yawl.



Down the driveway, he looked around, nodded his head, and laid the boat down right on target. We had to raise the boat a bit, as I made the boat stands about 4" too tall, and I had to hack a few inches off the bow stand.

Stacey started scraping mussels off with a shovel, and I went to settle up. Well, he felt bad about having stood us up, and he drove at mach 2, so the bill only came to $270. Suffice to say I was pretty happy. Even with the extra that the marina charged, the haulout bill came to half of what I budgeted for. Rick took off to try to get another boat moved, and we surveyed our project sitting beside the shop. First thing I had to do was get rid of all those mussels that Stace scraped off...before Layton's dogs started eating them! You know, those copper- and lead-laced antifouling paint mussels? Ick. I loaded them into a wheelbarrow (took about 6 trips of heaped wheelbarrow loads) and I won't tell anyone where they went. But at least the dogs won't get them. (If you want to know where they are, head for East Sooke and look for a big cloud of crows!)

Blew my load

What I cannot really describe is how excited I was to get the boat out of the water. I hadn't even had a chance to swim under the boat, yet. I was aching to get a look at the bottom.

I had a vague idea what it looked like, from photos of similar boats as well as the plans that I got for xmas from Stacey (best gift, ever!) But I hadn't seen MINE. I also wanted to see what kind of work I was in for...

I had been excited for more than a month, but the few days leading up to the actual moving of the boat were almost sleepless for me. I woke up SUPER early to get everything ready, drive Stacey into town for her class, and get to the marina in time to move the boat to the ramp. I went over the night before and lashed the mast down on a 2x4 cradle, so all I had to do was move the boat. I got to the marina an hour early, as the guy hauling the boat was due at 9:30. I enlisted Lyal's aid in moving the boat (Lyal is the yard guy at the marina). As you recall, there was no longer an outboard on the boat, and I declined to borrow the one off Layton's boat without asking. This is where things started to go...off. First, the marina (knowing I was leaving) found a way to charge 2 days extra moorage at the daily rate, even though I had been there 10 months at the monthly rate. They also levied a $20 ramp use fee and $25 for Lyal's 10 minutes to tow me around. I'd have done it myself if I didn't have to back the boat out of the slip, first! On retrospect, I should have just done it that way...by myself.

So Lyal (who is a few beer short of a six-pack, really) came over with one of the decrepit work boats and grabbed a boomkin (bowsprit on the stern) and dragged the boat out of its slip. I passed him a line, correctly routed, and he insisted on wrapping it around my spritstay (bowsprit shroud) a few times. Then he started off, HOLDING the line to Larkie, even though a perfectly good cleat was fastened to the work boat in a place perfect for towing. I watched in (relative) horror as he kept gunning the outboard and nearly dragging himself out of the workboat, holding on to the line tangled in Larkie's bowsprit rigging. I stood in the stern of Larkie, doing my best to follow Lyal's waggly course while he struggled to light a cigarette while driving the work boat and holding the Larkie's bowline at the same time. Thankfully, we had a wind astern, so I didn't have to partake in his tobacco fumes. As we approached the dock at the boat ramp he reminded me to move my fenders to the port side of the boat. This was good advice, and I did so.

We arrived at the ramp, but before Lyal would let me tie up he insisted on untying all the fenders I had just mounted, and carefully re-tying them on with well-crafted granny knots. I let this pass without comment. Although it had cost me $138 more than I expected, my boat was now ready at the ramp and was about to come out, as soon as the man with the trailer arrived. I had 10 minutes.

I wasn't sure how this whole boat-trailer-ramp thing worked with my boat, so I had brought my drysuit with me. I hurriedly struggled into it (no mean feat when you don't have a buddy to help zip you up) in order to be ready when the truck arrived.

About 20 minutes later it started to rain really heavily, so I was grateful for the rubber suit. At 10 o'clock I was concerned something was holding the boat hauler up, so I phoned. The guy at Jenkins Marine told me his guy should arrive any minute. At 10:30 he phoned back and said his trucker cancelled. CANCELLED? Not an option!

By this time I had discovered that my drysuit wristseals were a little tighter than they should be, and my purple hands were starting to hurt. I was hungry. I was FULLY EXPECTING to go home with my boat. I was emotionally charged. I was irate. And I told Mr. Jenkins Marine, not an option, get him down here. His response was "I don't know what to tell you, buddy."

So I called every other boat hauling guy around. Mark, the owner of the marina helped me out a bit, and was made aware of my dilemma. He offered some numbers and called a few people. Bottom line, the only guy available was in Nanaimo and he wanted $1500 just to show up. Forget it! I had the suit off by this time and was coming off my anger-adrenalin. I ended up parking the boat beside the ramp and going home. I had no idea how long it would be until Rick, the guy who drives the boat truck, would be well enough to work. And at $60 a day moorage, I had no idea how much it might cost me.

I went home totally emotionally drained. I couldn't sleep. I was still mad/tired/enervated. Resigned. Apathetic. I crashed hard on that. Go figure.