I’ve never done it in my life. Playing hooky from school always felt like one of the most wrong things to do to me as a kid. But Tuesday seemed like a good excuse for our daughter to join us on our big day where the rigging ccd came down, and we moved Skyward off her dock to a new location for the Winter.
I didn’t want this blog to be all about this topic, but we said ‘goodbye’ to Chesapeake Harbour Marina (CHM). When we decided to move to the Annapolis area, we chose CHM, because of the location and the speed at which we could be sailing after leaving the dock. The tucked-in feel with townhouses 360 degrees around the marina felt safe and secure. The docks were nicely maintained, and the staff was great. We rented the slip for the season, but it was directly in front of the bar/restaurant.
That bar/restaurant was under renovation, and after opening late in the season, it drew quite a lot of attention and boat traffic. There are some positives and negatives to this; overall, our slip had a front row to the literal parade of boats circle in the dead end at the restaurant.
What really got us was when CHM called to inform us of the 25% increased slip rate for the upcoming year claiming the market is driving the increase. CHM couldn’t fill all of their mid-range slips this last season, but I know 50 ft slips were mostly full. Maybe they don’t want a 25 year-old sailboat sitting on their front row; they’d rather have a like new 50 ft power boat yacht to have their bar/restaurant customers to look at. When we went shopping around at neighboring and very nice marinas that we would consider, the rates quoted hadn’t universally gone up by 25%. I have nothing bad to say about the staff or frankly the marina itself; we had clean power, nice bathrooms, good water, and relative safety from weather. We can get that other places for less, so we said “Adios!” to our friends there – it’s a small world and maybe we will be back some day.
We had to remove as much as possible to prepare the boat for the rigging removal and mast unstepping as well as teak deck replacement. We took literally everything off the boat except the tools. We raised the boat 6″ out of the water by the removal of what felt like 1,000-2,000 pounds of gear and spare parts. We also disconnected all wiring from the mast. This was one of those projects that we waited until the very last minute to do. We know we have some cleanup to do when the mast is re-stepped.
In order to take down the rigging, we decided to rely upon our neighboring marina, Bert Jabins, for the heavy lifting, coordination and mast storage. If you know yachting, you know Bert Jabins Yacht Yard. Before we departed CHM, I started getting into a huge mess in the anchor locker. It appears that our anchor chain is completely corroded but I don’t have pictures. We will have to replace that this Winter. B-O-A-T = Break out another $1000.
With the sails completely off the boat, we motored around the bend to Jabins, as locals refer to it. I had to back the boat into the dock location so that The Rigging Co. and Jabins teams could successfully unhook and crane lift the mast and all rigging off the boat. This was a very short 2 nm trip around the corner.
It was a moist and cool morning with no wind, so it was perfect weather to take down the rigging. As soon as we docked and tied up with the help of Jabin’s staff, The Rigging Co. wasted no time climbing aboard to get the job started. I couldn’t even believe how fast they were at starting up. We hardly shared a hello, and they were already freeing cables and lines that hadn’t been attended to for over 15 years.
To be honest, things were moving so fast that I felt ‘in the way’ of progress. As lines were being untied and pins were being removed, I had many thoughts of ‘oh, I should have un-done that’, or ‘I wish I would have labeled that’, or even better ‘bummer, i forgot to attend to that one’. As an example, we spent a great deal of time un-wiring the mast from the 7 or 8 cables that run up inside of it. One piece we forgot to address was unwiring the SSB antenna on the backstay. One of the crew members from The Rigging Co. had to be hoisted up about 10 feet in the air to undo this line.
Skyward has a deck-stepped mast, which means that the mast sits on top of the deck. This makes removal of the mast and standing rigging a bit easier. Some sailboats hava a keel-stepped mast, and when the mast is removed from the boat, a hole is left in the deck where the mast stands upright from below deck. If you don’t know what a deck-stepped mast is, check out this article. Before I knew it, all of the rig was being lifted off the boat. The mast removal was a real treat to watch in person. The team at Jabins and The Rigging Co. were complete pros and in control the entire time.
The Jabins’ team gentle laid the mast and rigging down in the yard, and we got our first close-up views of this critical part of Skyward.
Shortly after all of this activity which took about 2-3 hours to complete, we prepared to move the boat down to Liberty Marina. It was a very calm morning, and we had a 2 hour, 12 nm motor sail ahead of us. The Chesapeake Bay was almost as smooth as glass, and we saw several boats moving to their Winter locations on this short hop down to Liberty.
As we pulled away from Jabins, I noticed how light the boat felt while motoring and maneuvering.
Our favorite memory from this day was to watch Audrey take the helm for a few minutes. As we approached Thomas Point Shoal Light, Audrey said “I’ll drive!”. We were both stunned, and we instantly hopped into action to get her set up for the big right-hand turn. You can read about Thomas Point Shoal Light here at this link.
After we rounded Thomas Point, we headed up the South River where the conditions were even more quiet.
Marty Muench from Osmotech is going to replace the teak deck this Winter while the boat is in the water. With the bow of the boat so light, the thruster barely made a difference, but we inevitably backed the boat up into our temporarily slip. That’s all for this day of playing ‘Hooky”. It was jammed-packed, but we had a great time working together as a team. This blog will follow with the updates on these two major projects for Skyward. Until next time!
The Loxodograph 