Contrail is Home and Boats are Playing Pinball

Dana, Tom, David, Arthur and Oliver sailed their boat back to Palacios from Port Oconnor last week. They drove from Austin and picked us up so we could drive their van back to Palacios from Port OConnor. We had dinner with them at Los Cucos once again and drove to Port OConnor. It was after dark when we arrived. They unloaded their gear and we bid them farewell until they got back the next day to Palacios. We drove the van home with their utility trailer and on the way, the tailgate fell off the trailer while we were on the highway!! It was crazy! Luckily, no one was behind us. Brett found it and tied it to the trailer.

They arrived on the boat the next afternoon. The kids loved it, except David had gotten a little ill on the way. They unloaded the boat the next two days into the van. They asked us to watch their boat and to run the engine once in awhile and offered Contrail for us to use when we want. I will miss all of them greatly as they head toward Deleware soon. I consider them great friends and will miss them a lot.

The next day they had gotten back, one of the larger boats in the marina went out for the first time of the season. We watched from across the marina as he attempted to pull back into his slip with high winds pushing him. He attempted to make a wide turn to make the slip and stopped dead in his tracks while I was snapping a picture of him. It wa s a beautiful Hans Christianson type boat. His lifeline had caught on Bi Frst's anchor! It snapped the 45' LOA boat back into Tom and Dana's boat while they were out to dinner. There were about 6 people on deck of the Hans Christian boat and only one was trying to fend of the 50,000 lb boat with an aluminum pole. Fred hurried down to try and help the boat as she bounced of two other boats and was slipping past her slip into another boat. Brett ran over there and I stood staring. Brett barked orders as they tried to back her up and into the slip without hitting more boats. The owner of the boat was at the helm, steering while his passengers ran around on deck looking helpless.

They finally wrestled the boat back into the slip. We later found out he had ripped a stanchion out of the toe-rail on Bi-Frost's anchor. He had damaged Tom and Dana's propane base that Tom's dad had painstakingly built and had also ripped off their flag pole. The owner of the Hans Christian hurried to pay Tom for the damages.

Luckily the only damage seemed to be to Tom's boat and the Hans Christian. He was very elderly and was the only one on the boat that knew anything about sailing. But with Fred, Brett and D'na, they were able to get her back into the slip. I stupidly stood there across the marina just watching instead of jogging over to help. I felt stupid.

The guests of the large boat quickly fled the park and the poor old guy was left to clean up the mess of his beautiful boat by himself.

Well we are are going to go work on the boat today. We have outlined some tasks to do in order so Brett felt a little more structured on what needs to be done on the boat- He was feeling very overwhelmed at the projects so we wrote them out and came up with loose plans on what to do when. Last week we mounted the starboard side of the rub/toe-rails and rebedded the track. That was quite the process! I helped a lot last weekend. The Portside of the boat, the track and rails took him about a week with a little help from me. The starboard side took us two days together! We did end up with a problem with the tracks leaking, we had forgotten to push calking down into the drilled holes for the bolts on the forward track so they leaked a little. We will need to take the huge bolts out and do it again. Very frustrating and expensive. But we want t done right.

Today he is sanding the rub/toe-rail which are Purple Heart and prepping the cockpit to paint primer on it. Dennis (the park manager) had graciously given us 2 gallons of Epoxy Primer to help us and thank Brett for his help on his boat. It was about $200 in paint! So Brett wants to prime the cockpit today and sand the wood on the rails. I will begin varnishing them this afternoon. When we are both done, we'll probably head over to the boat yard where our mast sits and start prepping her for paint as well.

The boat yard has recently switched hands and it is not going to be good for us. We have about 2 months to remove the mast from the yard before they start possibly charging us $200 a month for storage.. We also found out that hauling out will no longer be $15/day. It will be $15/day for the first week (plus $300 to haul out) and then $50/day after that!!! We need to be hauled a for about a month or even two! So we are feeling very stuck on what we're going to do. We may just haul out for a week and attempt to replace the prop, strut for the shaft and some of the thru hull fittings. We may end up painting her after we leave to cruise and haul out somewhere cheaper... Very disheartening... We weren't planning on hauling out till around September but this boat yard is closing soon and moving to another location and open to only large ships.. I am trying not to feel discouraged, I am just trying to figure out what we can do...

Well I better quit writing so I can go start working on the boat.

Hope everyone is doing well.

(PS- I noticed a lot of spelling errors- this computer is not working very well and is lagging when I type- sorry.)