As I write this last post for the 2022-2023 season, I’m sitting in my living room relaxing after a long drive home. We had a few challenges leading up to our haulout day and the biggest one was the weather. It was very hot and super windy from Sunday right through to our haulout on Tuesday, making lots of our final jobs way more difficult.
Our original plan was to leave the pier and head over to the haulout dock around 5:30pm Monday (May 1) when it was slack current. It’s much easier to get off the pier when it’s slack or when the current is pushing you off the pier. Unfortunately the very strong wind was pushing us onto the pier, making it almost impossible to get off safely. No problem – we were first haulout on Tuesday (May 2) morning so we’d just have to get off the pier around 8am.
We woke early on Tuesday morning and the wind was down – yippee!! Julia and Brad volunteered to help us get off the pier and then get us onto the haulout dock and they arrived right on time (around 7:30am). Unfortunately we had to get off the pier with a flood tide which meant we were being pushed onto the pier. We were all ready to spring our stern off the pier by keeping a dock line on the bow but the current was so strong that we had a lot of trouble prying off. After several tries, Mark just revved our engine as hard as he could – we blasted (well it is a sailboat so it was a slow blast😁) off the pier. It was crazy!!! I was on the bow looking back to see our solar panel and outboard motor getting closer and closer to the pier as Mark tried to move us away while the current pushed us in!! We made it off but it was tense. We slowed down and headed for the haulout dock where Julia and Brad were waiting to take our lines. It was much easier getting onto this dock because the current was pushing us in but it still was a challenge. Mark did a great job maneuvering around 2 boats at the end of the dock to get us into position for haulout.
The haulout went perfectly and right on time. We were safely secured on our stands by 10am. We were placed in the far end of the Reynolds yard with about 6 or 7 other sailboats. It’s not a bad spot – power and water are right at the boat, but it is a long way from the lounge (laundry and washrooms). It seemed to take us a long time to do all the final storage jobs this year. We had a few new jobs that we haven’t had in previous seasons – holding tank pump out, installation of a new wooden frame and tarp over the forward deck and cockpit plus a few other smaller new jobs. It all wrapped up by 4:30pm and we were on the road to home by 5pm.
We left Reynolds Park and drove as far as Florence, SC. We stopped for the night there and got up early Wednesday morning to do the rest of our drive. We had the best border crossing ever at around 10pm – no one waiting and the border guy took about 2 minutes to let us in!! We got home around 10:30pm!! I’d forgotten that we left all our Christmas decorations up so it’s Christmas in Kingston still!!
This was a fantastic season. We had the girls visit us together for 2 weeks and the weather was perfect for doing all kinds of exploring! We hung out with old friends and met some new ones along the way. It’s now time to relax and start planning for next season!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 