Another Step (and un-step)
You know that saying “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”?
It’s on all sorts of motivational swag. It’s not wrong, of course, but it’s a bit incomplete. ‘Cause regardless of the length of the journey, the first step isn’t enough. You gotta keep moving to get where you’re going.
This is a story of only a few miles of a journey. We really don’t know how long that journey will turn out to be. But so far, we’re still moving.
It was dark at 6:00 when I woke up. Dark and foggy and a bit cold. Coffee was hot and the bagel was delicious. Got dressed, started some hot tea for Amy, and made my way outside. The sun was just making its way above the horizon. The air was cold and damp. The cockpit was covered in dew. One last look around, to be sure everything was in it’s place. Today was a big day in more ways than one. Kotona was leaving for her new home. We had done everything that was on the shipper’s checklist. All was secure and ready. Well, except maybe for me.
Our boat has spent the last several years on Lake Lanier near Atlanta. It’s a nice lake, as far as we could tell. But it wasn’t our lake. Our only experience of it was a couple of hours during the sea trial. But here we were, about to motor, roughly five miles, to the haul out marina. Or rather I was about to motor. Amy was about to drive the car. But hey, singlehanding an unfamiliar boat, on an unfamiliar lake, to an unfamiliar marina; what could possibly go wrong? Many things I suppose, but fortunately, only a few actually did.
The first was my own fault. Well, okay technically they were all my own fault, but we’ll take them one at a time. The first was not learning the chartplotter. And I have the manual! Oh, it powered up just fine, but the chart wasn’t what I expected. “Why was that a problem?”, you ask, “Why not just use the Navionics app on your phone?” Well, yes I have that and it works fine, when your battery is charged or you have a USB outlet at the helm. Eventually, I figured out that those thin black lines on the really nice B&G plotter were the tracks from when we, with the broker piloting, took the boat to the haul out marina for the survey. “Oh, I can follow those, I guess” recovering from the panic of my phone dying. Sigh.
The second, also my fault, was a failure to interpret what the plotter was telling me. “See there’s the marina just off the port bow.” Except, the plotter showed the track on the port beam. “But I can see it right there.” Did I mention it was foggy this morning? Yeah. The sun rising through a low fog gave a wonderfully obscured view to the east. The glare on the water didn’t help. So I couldn’t see the proper marina back in the cove where it lived. But deciding to trust the tracks, I turned hard to port, and followed the bread crumbs put down on a previous step of our journey. After a few minutes the fog cleared enough to see that this was in fact the right marina. Thanks, science!
The third and really most minor bit of trouble was docking. The first attempt wasn’t bad, just not close enough. Backing out to readjust, I quickly became aware that the prop-walk in reverse was not what I was used to in our Beneteau. No crashing, more of a “why won’t you back up straighter?” experience. The second attempt was much better. Docked and secure, I’m not sure which of us was more relieved.
The rest of the day, happily, was someone else’s responsibility. The yard crew arrived and lifted our boat like they knew what they were doing. By the time they carried her back up the ramp and pressure washed her, the truck was in position. And the loading began. We stood back and watched as the hydraulic arms of the trailer gently hugged the hull, positioning her for the road trip ahead.
A shout-out to Derek Leslie of Sailors Moving Sailors. We’ve never used a transport company before, but if we have to move our boat again, we’ll use him again. Well done and thanks.
While Derek was doing his thing, once the mast was down, I took the opportunity to install a new anchor light; one of the few things the survey noted as an issue. With that done, it was back to being a spectator. And that didn’t last very long. Docking to departing was less than three hours, and then, she was on her way.
The next step occurred the following day. By the time I arrived at our new marina, Derek already had the mast stepped and secure. Within half an hour, he was instructing me on what would happen as we backed down the ramp. Once in the water he signaled to crank the engine. Cranked right up, water properly exiting the exhaust port. A quick look around provided a moment of terror as I watched a trickle of water make its way down the hull inside the engine compartment. “But there are no thru hulls over there and it’s coming from up high somewhere” was my thought and a puddle from the previous night’s rain that had gotten displaced as we backed down the ramp, was my conclusion.
A signal from Derek and one more slight bump as the trailer moved its last, and she was free. In the water, under her own power, in her new home. A short ride to her new slip, an uneventful docking, and one more step complete.
