Boat Porn II
May 2008
By: Scott Stillman
It's time to get the bottom done. We started looking around for a lift to pull the mother ship out of the water for a scrape and paint. After several days of making calls I found two.
The first lift was on the other side of red fish island but it was a commercial lift. The contact said they would lift her out and truck her three miles to the shop for painting. um, no.
Our second quote was not only less than half the cost but they ran the yard, had a retail shop, and were friendly. (remember we are slow and stupid) Jim at Pier 77 in Galveston was our guy.
Jim explained what needed to be done in small words, talking very slowly. It's May, August and 105 degrees with 95% humidity is right around the corner. Not only does Pier 77 do bottoms they are a full service shop. They helped me design our AC system, and have a full service manufacturing shop.
Thursday night I dropped Jennifer off at the Hilton down town Houston and I slept on the mothership.
Jennifer had an interview Friday morning early with Earnst & Young then another interview later in the day with a regional firm DRDA. More about that in another episode.
I got up early and cut the lines for my first ever single handed sail on VII C's. All by myself. Big One's. Chest thumping, I pulled away from the pier, almost. Correcting a small navigational error, I swear the pier moved. There must have been a rip tide. I motored out of Waterford harbor cleaning up my little yellow stain.
I put up the sails and motor-sailed down the ship channel toward Galveston.
Narrowly averting disaster, I negotiated the inlet to Pier 77. I had a 30 knot tail wind 3 ft seas in the bay and a 50 foot opening. Then I had a 90 deg port turn into a slip slightly bigger than the mother ship letting the wind push me in. More chest thumping.
OMFG!!! Aliens have attacked the mothership.
After some serious scraping and grunting, and a little standing around scratching and saying "Yep" we came to the conclusion that there were a few (3,504,354) blisters that needed attention.
The dagger board lifts up and down on a track with roller skate like trucks. no trucks!! Those needed to be rebuilt. The lines that move the dagger board needed to be re-attached (ripping those out) helped us notice the trucks needed attention.
Leaving it in Jim's capable hands we headed back to our weekday place in College Station.
Revised: September 21, 2008
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