First lesson learned - docking a bigger boat

Despite the hangovers from the boat warming party, everyone wanted to go sailing on the new boat Sunday afternoon.  We spent a lot of the morning goofing off while everyone got into place. The girls recited all the lines they knew from Titanic to me. Impressively more than I know myself. 

We disconnected the shore power, fired up the engine and prepared to cast off. I ignored the shallow water alarm that was beeping on the chartplotter thinking, the water is always shallow here, we'll be ok.

I started backing out of the slip, and I ran into a problem. The boat was not turning.

At 27 feet, the Seahorse was short enough that even if you back straight out of the slip, you still had enough space between piers to make a turn. At 34 feet, Gimme Shelter almost bridges the entire space between piers. I pulled forward and attempted to back up again. It still wouldn't back to starboard.

I was also noticing that once moving forward or backward, it took a lot more reverse throttle to get Gimme Shelter to stop moving when compared to the Seahorse. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion and all that.

I was starting to get nervous. I had five passengers watching me struggling at the helm.  The guys were standing on the front, and I'm sure they would have helped, but there was a pretty big language barrier, and I don't blame Fred for being nervous.  

Just as I was about to bump the dock behind us, I pulled forward again.

I slowly backed up again. This time the wheel jerked in my hands, which meant the rudder had plowed into the bottom. This sent our aft to port instead of starboard -- not the direction I was wanting to go, but at least we weren't sideways anymore. I started backing down the lane to the channel, and for a second I thought everything would be ok. Then the wheel jerked in my hands again as the rudder hit more mud, and we were once again turning sideways.

Thank goodness me and Fred now know exactly how to deal with each other in high stress situations. There was a period of time when we first started sailing together where the second anything went wrong everyone paniced and there was a little bit of chaos. We have both learned to at the very least hide our panic from each other in stressful situations. A calm atmosphere is really a must in this kind of situation.  

At this point, I gave up and pulled back into the slip.

I was embarrassed, and I felt like I let everyone down, but trying to back out a large vessel during low tide that I had driven all of one time was just not a good idea. I didn't want to smash into something and end up in one of those "credit card captains" videos on YouTube

In consolation I invited everyone onto the Seahorse, which has a deeper slip further down the pier. Everyone was more than happy to go out on the little boat. It was just the joy of going out on a sailboat that everyone was really looking forward to. I think in the end it was only important to us to take the new boat out. It backed out with no problem, and we were off for a quick cruise through upper Galveston Bay.

Everyone took so many pictures on the way out.  I forget there really is a lot of cool things to see.  

 I asked Buenjy to take pictures of Fred for me since we never get pictures of him. Such is the life of a photographer. It's unfortunate that Fred and I both had crazy hair after drinking all night and sleeping on the boat. He still looks good to me though.  

All in all, everyone had a great time and I was very happy to have everyone on the boat. Anyone and everyone is welcome to come sail with us anytime! There is nothing like sharing the joy of sailing. (Unless we don't like you ... or it's low tide.)

Delivery

I'd read about boat deliveries on other blogs, and a few of my marina friends will regale us with the tales of their weeks at sea and emergencies they overcame while delivering boats various places.

Well, I finally got to make a delivery -- sort of.

We had to move Gimme Shelter across Clear Lake from Seabrook to her new slip at Marina Del Sol.

This seemed like a very simple, straight-forward task. I took Friday afternoon off work thinking we might even take a little sail out on the bay before bringing her in.  Wow that was incredibly hopeful.  

We had only brought one car for the weekend, so we were either going to have to leave the car at Seabrook and beg a ride back or we could catch a ride over in a dinghy. Either way, Mary wanted to go to the new boat first to start getting her ready.  I was excited to get the boat cleaned up and aired out.  Unfortunately I had forgotten all of my cleaning supplies at home, expecting to make a quick run to the store for the essentials on arrival.  

As we arrived at Seabrook, our insurance agent started calling saying he'd never gotten the engine serial number for the insurance policy. I said, no problem, let me read it off to you.

It was at that point I realized the reason he didn't have the serial number was because it had most likely been unreadable for the better part of a decade.

This set off several calls to the broker who began placing calls to the seller who began searching documents to track down this elusive number while I headed to Marina Del Sol to take a dinghy ride back.  He ended up finding the number on a previous survey, and not on the registration papers like you would think.  

The first hitch in our plan came into play when I arrived at Marina Del Sol to find the lowest tide I'd seen since January.

There was no water.

Our neighbor said there hadn't been any water all week, but that MAYBE the tide was coming back tonight.

With Mary busy cleaning the boat, there was nothing to be done except to sit down and have a beer with my friends on the Tina Marie.

Perhaps that was a bad decision since I soon got an angry phone call asking why I hadn't come back to pick Mary up. Oops.  By soon Freddie means well over two hours later.  I was expecting him to come right back to get me, and having no cleaning supplies at all I was quickly lonely and bored on the new boat.  Feeling rather jealous and abandoned I might have been a little overly grouchy.  

I drove back around the lake and retrieved her, the broker retrieved the engine serial number, and soon Mary was on the phone with the insurance company again experiencing first hand why people say "boat" stands for break out another thousand.  I am thoroughly convinced I will never have money again.

I did a little more cleaning on the Seahorse and a little more drinking on the Tina Marie, all the while keeping a close eye on the tide.

Around 7:30 p.m. I said, "I think it's deep enough."

I really wasn't sure that it was deep enough, but the tide was coming in. I figured by the time we got across the lake and back, it would be deeper.

We hopped into our friend's dinghy and set off across the lake.  I just want to say thank you to Ray for taking us across the lake, but that Ray's dinghy is much too fast for me. We will not be putting a 20hp outboard on any dinghy we buy. 

Just as we were pulling up to the boat in Seabrook Marina, the dinghy suddenly died. Our friend Ray attempted to restart it, but it was locked up.

I grabbed a paddle and sculled over to the dock. A quick inspection showed that the painter had gone under the dinghy and gotten tangled in the prop. This seems familiar.  Unfortunately, it was wrapped too tight to untie and none of us were carrying a knife. Nor did we have a knife on Gimme Shelter.

No problem, I said. We'll just fire up Gimme Shelter and tow the dinghy back.

Everyone came aboard, and I began cranking the motor on Gimme Shelter. It cranked and cranked and cranked and cranked, but it never coughed to life.  Your new boat not starting seems like it would be your greatest fear, but after so long on boats you learn to expect problems.  It's the only way to keep your sanity.  

Call number two to the broker then occurred as I had to ask him the correct starting procedure. Embarrassing.

Once I'd heated the glow plugs with the electricity actually turned on to them, she started right up.

The guys helped me with the dock lines, and we were off -- making our delivery across Clear Lake just as the sun began to set.

Pulling into the marina on my new boat, standing on the bow, with all of our friends yelling and waving from the dock, was definitely a high point in my boating career. Nothing is as fun without friends to share it with.  

Even with the dinghy delay and the extended diesel starting procedure, the tide had not come in as high as I'd hoped it would, but we were able to plow through the muddy entrance to Marina Del Sol and get situated in our new slip with no issues.

We (I) finally had (my) our new boat. Just kidding, Freddie!

(And Ray's dinghy was fine. We cut the painter loose, pulled up the motor and had it running again -- no problem.)