New Slip, New Thoughts

Calypso has a normal slip at the yacht club, a cushy berth that most people think is some kind of punishment. We’ve been in a different spot since mid-December because of planned slip maintenance.

View from the temporary slip. Floating docks are great.

Moving slips is a little bit of an ordeal right now, since we’ve removed the batteries entirely and therefore have no way of starting the engine. When we got word from Brian, the club manager, that our slip was ready for us, we loaded up the car with items bound for storage and headed off, hoping the wind would cooperate with our engine-less (and sail-less) movement.

Calypso shares a dock with the pump out slip. Bonus? This means we’ve got a full length dock (no finger pier crazy acrobatic shenanigans) with no neighbors. Downside? The occasional shitspray as people inexpertly empty their holding tanks. The dock work over the winter was that they switched the pilings to the other side, allowing for a larger fairway on the side that’s tighter as a squeeze.

So we woke up promptly on Sunday morning, loaded the car up with items to take to the storage unit, and headed out to the boat.

We’re on the side where the fire extinguisher is.

There were a few things to take care of before we could bring the boat to her new home. Biggest? Cutting a notch out of the “wall” so we could get a line around the piling. Some expert drill and chisel work later, Jeremy was ready for the next trick.

I didn’t take any photos. But. Calypso was oriented bow out in a slip off to the right of the photo here, with the wind blowing toward the dock. Rigging a couple of very long lines (and with the help of our friend and fellow FBYC member Brad Miller) was step 1 - and then securing them to a finger pier closer in. Essentially, Jeremy pushed the boat off the dock (and then got on) while Brad and I played the lines, hanging Calypso into the middle of the fairway. As I loosened my line, Brad pulled his, the wind did its magic, and Jeremy guided the boat into her new slip. The quietest engine ever - and a warping job that worked perfectly.

Calypso is back in her slip. Here’s hoping the club moves the pump out equipment so it’s not right next to our boat - and so we don’t have to run our shore power cord over the pump out stuff. Yuck. (There is another issue with the slip. Anyone see it?)

See the challenge here?

We’re starting to make plans to be in Vermont for the summer, after the house sells. Hurricane season is supposed to be a strong one - being 14 hours away from the boat isn’t particularly appealing. We’ve tied her up well but there are a few challenges with this new slip that give us some pause.

So we’re thinking seriously about hauling her out for the summer/fall, coming back and working on her while she’s out of the water. This pandemic has pushed back our timeline by about a year, so the push to hire others to do work is off. If she’s out of the water for the summer, we will rest easier about being in Vermont. Is it easier to work on her in the water? Yes, for many projects; climbing a ladder gets old fast. That said, we do have a lot of out of the water work that must be accomplished. Maybe we’ll just suck it up and stay out until it’s all done.

What do you do for hurricane season? Any thoughts?