The boat floats.
Let me back up. We spent the first 3 days working at a feverish pace (literally – it was a hundred and twenty frickin’ degrees inside the cabin during mid-day) in the boat yard with Paradox up on stands, desperately trying to get her ready to launch. As it turns out, a boat doesn’t seem much like a boat when she’s towering 10 feet off the ground. Any of the romantic attachment a man can get to the idea of a boat is lost when you see your girl looking remarkably chubby and squat with her nether regions exposed. The notion of this boat carrying us long distances over the next year seemed theoretical at best when that was our only view of her. And with that came the first gut-flips of questioning whether quitting our jobs, selling our stuff, giving up our apartment, etc. was really such a great idea.
I didn’t sleep much during those first few nights.
But we sweated and worked and the days passed and soon enough we were at our scheduled launch day. As keen as we were to get the boat in to the water, I had a serious case of gnawing apprehension as I imagined all the things that could go wrong. Still, we got up early to make sure we were at the boatyard office first thing to arrange a specific time for the launch. The yard manager, Keith, said no problem, whenever we were ready, just pay off our yard tab. We told him we’d be ready to go in a couple hours, just needed to do a couple things on the boat (like externally mark bulkhead locations for the slings) and go to the marina office and get a slip assignment so we’d have a water home for her. The cashier was having computer problems so we said we’d run down to the marina office and stop back by to pay her before heading to the boat. We walked back thirty minutes later to pay the lady and Keith called out from his office “get on down there, she’s in the slings and already in the water.â€
I gave him my best blank stare.
“Wait…what? Paradox?!†Thinking that perhaps he’d confused us for another sunburnt couple.
“Yea, she’s in the water,†he reiterated.
“Oh!†and we went bounding down the stairs and across the yard. Fittingly, after days without more than a sprinkle, the skies had opened up, dumping rain torrentially. I haven’t seen this kind of rain in years living in San Francisco. I think Alanis Morisette had a mis-titled song (is that actual irony?) about this kind of scenario.
IT’S LIKE CRAZY RAIN, ON YOUR BOAT’S LAUNCH DAY
We sprinted round the corner and there she was, still in the slings of the travel lift, but bobbing around happily in the rain. All I could think was “please God, don’t let there be saltwater pouring in.†I leapt on to the stern, scrambled down in to the cabin, and lifted the floor boards to the bilge. Nothing. No water at all. Relief.
The next immediate task was to see if the diesel would start. With shaky hands and held breath I inserted the key in to the engine control panel and turned, setting the low oil pressure alarm off. One more quick prayer and I pushed the start button. Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-VROOM-bup-bup-bup-bup. Hah! What was I worried about?
Moments later the travel lift operators had noticed our arrival and hurried back over “Get yah fendahs out, mon.â€
I had no time to revel in the lumpy purr of our functional diesel, they wanted us out of there. Quick setting of fenders and hitching dock lines and they were warping us out of the slings out through the two concrete piers that form the haul out slip. I easeded the transmission in to forward and off we went. Two hundred yards later we found our slip at C dock and after just one aborted docking attempt, we were tied up tight.
Regardless of some questionable launch procedures (owner not present?!), they ripped the band-aid off quick, giving us the old “I’ll pull on three†but doing it on one. In less than five minutes I went from fretting about the mere idea of the launch to bopping along through the marina under our own power. There’s probably some kind of lesson here about the value of just doing rather than over-thinking and allowing anxiety to build. Nevertheless, I’m doing it all over again about the next phase – leaving the marina. There are fuel filtration systems to re-engineer, broken dip sticks to extract, masts to climb, intermittent AC battery chargers, faulty autopilots, and on and on and on. So once again, I’ll lose sleep about it for the next week, but I’ll almost certainly find that when we bite the bullet and finally push out of Nanny Cay, everything will be fine.
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