Wsell, At Least The Rain Stopped! ! ! ! ! !

SHIP'S LOG:

I made arrangements on Friday for ABISHAG's winter storage, a sure sign that the sailing season and summer are fading fast. The Yankee Boatyard in Portland would appear to be the cheapest, or let us say, the least expensive place to store a boat for the winter. It is till going to cost more than a few buck, probably at least two Marine Units+, but it will be a lot less expensive than any of the others I contacted. The high was a nasty $54 a foot, plus the removal and storage of both masts a $5 dollars a foot( Main - 58 feet + Mizzen - 30 feet0 plus they reserved the right to clean and paint the bottom, clean and wax the side, and winterize everything on the boat at $90/ hour for labor and added costs for materials, to the local low of $35 a foot for hauling, bottom cleaning, blocking, storage, and launching in the spring, plus whatever winterizing you wanted done by the yard at $65 an hour plus materials. If you didn't know before, by a boat is the easiest and least expensive thing about boating!

By all indications, the "backyard" of this Boatyard is the place to get your boat stored as the yard itself fronts on the Connecticut River which is now in flood stage and will be again in the spring. The flood stage means that if it gets over 15 feet, it will flood the lower yard and that is not a good thing if you are working on your boat, especially the hull and the bottom. It raises also questions of the stability of the boat stands and poppets that keep the boat upright during storage. If I am lucky, I might get put next to Charlie who took his Shannon 43 up there before Irene made her appearance. Several others will also be heading up river as well.

I gather that the trip can be "exciting" as the "stuff" that often floats along in the river and be hazardous to your boat's health if not carefully avoided. Are items of flotsam and jetsam (trees, containers and the like) that get swept into the river as it rises during the snow melt and these are things that you do not like to encounter either on the way up nor on the way down. Ah, the fun of boat ownership.

No one has accepted my offer to crew south. The Walsh's are all set and as of right now they are the only ones definitely headed south. Chuck Estell( the launch operator) is going south but by car. Tom( the other launch operator) is waffling and I am not sure he will go south if his wife doesn't agree to go with him and she is not sure about the trip at all. The others who have talked about it are all still up in the air and as the days pass, the window is closing. They should all be pretty much set by now. Their boats should be checked out, the spares should be laid in. They should have all their charts - both paper and electronic - and have begun to lay out routes to the Chesapeake (inside or outside) , down the ICW ( how much and how little of it) and be semi set on their destination. The should also be making notes about when and where to stop, what places they wish to visit, what marinas facilities they want to make use of, and all the rest of that stuff. Perhaps the storms of the last few weeks have cooled them to the idea. Too bad, for there is nothing like being anchored in some creek off the ICW, with no lights and no one else around . . . . . . . except for Bubba and Cooter blasting away at the local wildlife.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to make the trip last year, if only for the reason that I have gone a whole year now without experiencing anything close to winter(forget about last December in Florida). But it is such a long trip that it is almost exhausting to think about it. The trip back didn't seem as long as the trip down because it ended "at home" whereas the trip down merely ended at the "turn around point" for the trip back. There is a lot to be said about staying in one place for awhile, a good, long while.