Well, the fiasco of our sea trial proved to be just the beginning of a lengthy series of nightmarish delays in the sale of the boat. A couple days after the sea trial, we had a mechanic out to figure out what was wrong with the engine. He eventually decided that the electronic control module (ECM) was the culprit so we immediately ordered a new one. These are obtained from a company in New Jersey, just up the coast from us. Simple, right? Nope. The following Monday we were told that they needed the old ECM in order to program the new one. Three calendar days lost as the new one was removed and sent to New Jersey. But as luck would have it, this happened to coincide with the big international internet problem caused by CrowdStrike. An entire week went by while the boat yard mechanics awaited the arrival of the new ECM. We had authorized overnight shipping because the clock was ticking on our contract to sell the boat. It was eventually discovered that UPS, who was supposed to overnight the old ECM to New Jersey, had in fact lost it! The company agreed to send the new one anyway, but we had to provide them with the hours on the engine so that they could program some information. This took several more days. (Coincidentally, the US post office also managed to lose a package of mail being forwarded to us from our mail house.) The new ECM was finally installed on July 31, 17 days after the problem was discovered. And no, they didn’t program the engine hours after all! The contract to sell the boat had to be extended as a result and the wide open throttle test was finally completed the next day. In the meantime, our 30 day limit to stay in this marina had to be extended, twice as it turns out. Hurricane Debby developed (“do you think it’ll hit Charleston?”) and our boat insurance was going to expire! I had to renew that for nearly $800. The minimum extension was for one month of which we ended up only needing seven days of additional insurance. Pricey piece of mind!
I’m not sure what was worse. Fearing that the buyers would back out of the contract? Fearing that something other than the ECM was wrong? Fearing that the marina would tell us we could not stay any longer (knowing all of the other marinas were full)? Fearing that the hurricane would hit Charleston (which it finally did)? Fearing that the insurance company would not extend our coverage given that a known named storm was bearing down?
For days we had casually talked to the marina staff about moving our boat to a slip so that we could tie off all four corners and saying that we, and several other boat owners, would remain on board during the hurricane. We finally got the OK to move into a slip about 12 hours before the storm settled on Charleston for four long days. Then we were informed that the county was closing the marina and everyone would have to leave – including liveaboards! This information came at 9:30 in the morning and we were literally the last people escorted out at 6 PM. It was absolutely pouring rain (more than 2 feet overall) and they put all of the dock carts into storage. As we had decided to leave the boat altogether, we needed to get our remaining belongings off the boat as we would not be returning. This is pretty hard to do when it’s a half a mile from the boat to the car and pouring rain. Fortunately, the staff helped us out with their golf carts. We managed to get the boat ready for the storm, lines doubled up at all four corners, removed all the windows in the cockpit and counter wrapped the jib with a spare halyard. We couldn’t leave the boat in quite the condition we had wanted to, but did manage to get everything off and ensure that the boat would be safe. Fortunately, the promised storm surge never arrived. If it had, it’s possible that our floating dock could have risen up off the top of the pilings, taking everything down river… After the storm, our broker replaced all the windows and cushions and retrieved our extra lines. Thanks Matt!
But the boat sale did finally close! They say it’s the happiest day of a boat owners life and, after all the stress, we’d have to agree. Hopefully Lawrence and Anna will enjoy her as much as we did!
During the delays we managed to kill some time touring Charleston, the high rent district of Sullivan’s Island, the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, the destroyer USS Laffey and caught another minor-league baseball game, the Charleston Riverdogs. The Yorktown served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. She is now an excellent floating museum, hosts the Medal of Honor Museum and has a number of historic aircraft. We even tested our van conversion by camping a couple hours away. At 1 AM John tapped out because of the heat. Not a lick of air and it was 80° with 89% humidity. We ended up in a hotel but did get to test our new setup.
The USS Laffey withstood the single worst kamikaze attack on any ship in history. On April 16, 1945, during the battle of Okinawa, the Laffey was badly damaged by four bombs, 22 kamikaze attacks (6 of which struck the ship) and strafing fire that killed 32 sailors and wounded another 71. They have a fantastic recreation of what it was like inside the forward gun turret when it was struck by a kamikaze plane, killing several men inside.
Since we couldn’t stay on the boat we departed Charleston and drove cross country back to Los Angeles. We stayed with sailing friends near Augusta, Georgia, and John’s sister in Alpharetta, Georgia. Rain from the hurricane was still very heavy, even this far inland. We stopped at the Florabama bar in Alabama (15 bars, 5 stages), and spent the night in New Orleans. Then stayed with friends in New Braunfels, Texas, visited John’s daughter in Waco and stayed with other friends nearby. Drove through some of the most beautiful mountains anywhere, past the VLA space exploration radio telescopes, saw where the original Smoky the Bear was found and ultimately buried as well as the last jail that Billy the Kid broke out of. Sheriff Pat Garrett put him there and eventually hunted him down and killed him.
Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, was one of our goals for this cross country trip. We made it in time and sat through the evening in the amphitheater to watch the great flight of as many as 500,000 bats departing for the night. Unfortunately on this night, they just trickled out and it was nothing spectacular. You can see videos online of the occasional mass exodus just before dark. The caverns, however, the next day were truly mind blowing. Considered the most beautiful caverns in the world and among the largest known. We highly recommend this stop! It’s difficult to tell, as the scale is almost absurd, but all of these pictures are taken in rooms that are 100-250 feet high and as much as a mile and a half across!
Finally, we spent a week with John‘s parents at the family log cabin in Pinetop, Arizona and caught up with his younger son and new puppy. Spent four days camping and hiking at nearly 10,000 feet in the White Mountains before making it back to LA where we will spend a couple of months as Theresa recuperates from another surgery.
We hope to be buying a catamaran this fall so stay tuned…
