21 Oct 13

Up at the crack of dawn for the final push. We moved the boat over to the fuel dock to top up the diesel tank and pumped out the holding tanks, followed by pumping in a bit of anti-freeze and odor preventer. Then, at 10:30, I pushed off the dock and Terri drove the rental car over to Anchors Away Boatyard. She beat me there, of course. I turned off the ICW to the left to head into the very narrow channel to the Travel-lift slip, with 2 knots of current pushing me from left to right and 20 knots of wind pushing me in the opposite direction. I had all the fenders set up to port so the wind could push me up against the pier after I got into the slip. When I was about 50 yards out, on final approach, coming in kinda hot because of the current and wind issues, Terri called me on the phone and advised that they wanted to back into the slip; WTF - could they not have mentioned this a few minutes ago when I called in for final instructions!?! “All back full”, bat turn to starboard, turn in place with “interesting” tide/wind challenges working to foil my plans, and backed right into the slip like I knew what I was doing. Except that the fenders were all on the wrong side. Fortunately, nearly all of the mooring lines were also on the “wrong” side, so the boys were able to hold the boat off the pier until we could get ourselves properly organized. Then, because the Travel-lift was so short, they wanted me to disconnect both back-stays and slack off the boom topping lift. The mast did not fall down and we were soon out of the water and up on the hard for the winter.  

After lunch, we winterized the main engine by again running the engine for a few seconds while pouring a gallon of anti-freeze into the raw water strainer. Then I drained the bilge one final time and took the lids off the bilge pump strainers, stuffed the mooring lines and fenders down into lazarette lockers and quit the boat. We stopped at the UPS store on the way to the hotel and shipped the sail to St. Petersburg.  

Finally, we staggered into the hotel in Wilmington and had a well-deserved G&T and a long hot shower. Light dinner at Moe’s Grill. What a (threesome of) day! While we are away, we looking to get some or all of the following work done on the boat:

Isenglass enclosure made for the cockpit

waterline (including bottom, anti-fouling paint) moved up by about 4” (to prevent marine growth accumulation on the topsides paint)

touch-up/repair a few minor, cosmetic dings in the topsides (blue) paint

repair wobbly bottom bearing on rudder

(maybe) add ~150# of lead weights to the port side to reduce the tendency of the boat to list to starboard