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!)
2 comments:
"No wonder the bitch wouldn't tack!" is my new favourite sentence.
flash
Actually Honey I asked if I could come along (not you asking me). And Rick was so gosh darn friendly it was hard to be mad at him. And I think there were more like 300 lbs of mussels. I know. I peeled them off. (need photos here).
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