Near the end of the season, I started looking around the web sites for local yacht brokers, just to see what boats were around and what I could get on a meager budget.  I saw some real beauties in the 38-40-something foot range.  After sorting by price, I did look at one or two, here and there.  I even took my extremely suspicious wife down to see a 40-something ketch that was within my dream range.  My wife was duly impressed by the high school cafeteria butt-bucket style chairs rusting away in the main salon.  How ingenious!  One could move them around and sit anywhere, even on deck!  I saw many similar innovations and upgrades as I scanned around this amazing vessel.   Several quarts of oil were safely stored in the bilge carefully protecting the stuffing box from corrosion.  I particularly liked the spacious engine room.  I could sure stow a lot of stuff in the places where the generator and refrigeration plant had once been.  I already could envision a name… “TARGET BARGE”.  I think I promised to add an addition on to the house to get my wife to look at this Massive-Maru but the grand tour took all of 15 minutes.  I should’ve stopped there.

Reflecting back, our first boat was just that.  We didn’t have a clue.  It was a mutual agreement between my honey bunny and myself.  The second boat was a compromise of size and cost.  It was her idea for the bigger boat and it turned out to be a beautiful boat after several years of work.  Many lessons learned.  I still looked around, just for drill.  One ad I looked at had an extremely dark picture of a 38 footer taken from a bad angle, on a bad day.  It was hard to make out that it was even a boat.  It was in a yard near work, so I announced that I was going to go look at it.  My wife looked at me as if to say, “No WAY!” and that a nap would be a better use of my time.  I went anyway.  It towered over me.  It had to draft at least twenty or thirty feet.  I almost got a nose-bleed as I climbed to ladder to get topside.  THIS WAS THE BOAT!!!  It was like I was hit with a can of West System!  There would be no other boat.  A 1983, center cockpit, cutter rigged, deep-fin keel IRWIN.  I didn’t have the keys so I couldn’t go below, but it didn’t much matter.  This was it.

I later got the keys from our friendly neighborhood yacht broker and took my first glances below decks.  I  checked the installed equipment.   It looked like someone had tilted the local Boats-R-Us on end, and poured out everything over $700.  Talk about cool stuff!  RADAR, line cutters on the shaft,  BIG diesel, wind indicators that would make a meteorologist envious, air conditioning, refrigeration, auto-pilot, davits, de-flatable and motor.  On and on the list went.

One head was outfitted with so much sanitary technology that using it just once required nothing short of a Space Shuttle launch checklist and at least one small nuclear reactor to provide the needed power for it to work it’s magic.  There was no doubt in my mind that this head’s overboard product would be nothing less than environmentally safe with the aroma of a fine pot-pouri.  First impressions can be VERY misleading.

Finances put the behemoth just beyond reach.  My initial budget computations took into account money I did not have and, most likely, could not get.  I could not figure out how I would do it without hitting the lottery or faking a Caribbean accent and opening a psychic hotline.  The eleven or twelve dollars of equity we had in our 33 footer would not go very far.  I would never be able to sell our 33 footer in time to buy the big boat!  I was now moving into dangerous waters.

Enter the 401K.  My wife said, “I don’t care what you do with your 40…...”   I didn’t catch the rest and flew into fiscal action.  I was then totally out of control.  I liken the stock market to a casino where you have someone place your bets for you.  A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing so I felt reasonably safe as I crawled through the rules and paperwork to “roll” the blessed 401K to some guy named IRA.  As the money flew, I reached out and grabbed a fist full as it went on by.  My 401K had now become 201J.  In a feeding frenzy I held my resolve and closed the deal.  It was February, I now owned two boats.  I was now going to have to work until I was 108 years old but I got the boat.  My great-grandkids would have to drive me to work “Which building do you work in Great Grandpa?”  “Follow your nose lad……”  Hopefully, somewhere in there, I will sell the “extra” boat.  I did make out a little, in a negative, dark kind of way.  After I rolled my stock out, in the wake of Enron and some other happenings, the company stock dropped about 30 percent and my losses would’ve amounted to almost what I paid for the boat.  I am a screaming financial genius until the stock recovers!

Prepping one boat for sale and the other for sail, sanded and painted seventy one foot of hull, wretched my back in twelve different axis.  To work, to boat, to home, to the “fatman chair.”  I no longer bent in the middle.  Wallowing in Ben-Gay like a mud puppy became the high point of the day.  Even now, when I smell Ben-Gay, I start looking for my sander.

The new boat was not in my “home” yard but a very select yacht club.  Through March and the beginning of April I seemed to be the only fool there but as spring appeared so did the masses.  Initially, my interactions with the natives were cordial.  I had even thought about joining the club but that was dashed in one day.
I have a “thing” about masts.  “A man that doesn’t shine the back of his boots doesn’t wipe his ass!” our  thoughtful Company Commander snarled, in Navy boot camp.  Attention to detail!  I have a similar philosophy about the condition of our boat’s mast.  The big boat’s mast looked like a whale’s rectal thermometer and needed a make-over before I was going to stick it on top of our new boat an sail triumphantly into our home marina.  I lured some co-workers over to the marina at lunchtime on day we lugged the gigantic mast over to the open field where others had positioned their masts for their various pre-launch rituals.  We slid ours in and parked it with a mast two feet to either side.  Ours stuck out several feet at either end.  Miles of mast.  As we hand-sanded the pitted nasty spots and roughed up the existing coating, we got horrified, side-long glances from the locals as they polished and waxed their aluminum sticks.  Were the non-members going to SPRAY their mast in the midst of this forest of aerodynamically pristine pig sticks?  Noooo, we were not.  No electrical power!  The first coat went on during the week with little fanfare and few witnesses.  Tiny rollers, the color was “French Vanilla” and went on remarkably well with a fairly nice gloss.  The following weekend the sun found New England and the indigenous yachties were out in force.  As we unloaded our painting stuff, several mast-marvels ventured over to admire our work.  “Looks real nice!  What are you using?”  “Rustoleum” I replied.  I know a polite look of disbelief when I see one, and we got a lot of them that day.  If I got an extra “awe-struck” look, I would add “’Got close to twenty one dollars worth of paint on it so I’ve got to be real careful.”  One thoughtful woman came over to inspect our work and didn’t run away.  Instead, she picked up our shrouds from the grass and spied the slip-on plastic chaff preventers that were installed. “Oh, my rigger says these are the worst things you can put on a shroud since they fill up with dirt and corrode the shroud.”  An interesting idea, but I kinda liked them and had no intentions of removing them.  I informed her of that, as she empowered herself, and started to remove them for me.  Too much help.  We had to get out of this yard QUICK!

At the Navy Base marina where we keep our boat, the boats are launched all in one day.  Small power boats are used like yard tugs to maneuver the freshly launched boats, “cold iron”, to their slips.  This prevented the launched boats from having to come up under their own power and dramatically reduced the possible lost time due to engines that would not start, not to mention possible demolition derby boat handling in the basin.  Never having launched in commercial yard, I just figured similar services were provided.

They picked us up, rolled us, stern first, over the water, dropped us in, popped on the mast, and said “Slip 12, thata way!”  All I could see was a sea of pilings.  For my first time ever at the helm of this monster, I would have to back out of the launch area, hang a left, back down a row of slips and back into a piling-line slip and tie up, stern to the pier.  Throw in seventeen knots of cross wind and cold and there you have it.  Old Salt graciously took the day off to help me with this launch so at least I had a knowledgeable, capable crew.  The big Perkins diesel fired right up.  The first opportunity to see how the boat would turn in reverse, was coming up in a boat length.  If I miss-judged the turn, a bank of rocks would keep me from straying too far.  Bless the full service marina.  They have thought of everything.  Did I see a defibrillator down below?  They should be required equipment for boats over 30 feet long in this marina.  The boat seemed to follow the rudder well as we made the first left.  Taking the wind right over the beam, I had a chance to see how the boat would react.  The boat walked a little towards the row of pilings to the left but corrected nicely.  I was beginning to appreciate the 11 tons of boat.  Now, I’ve got to swing the stern around 90 degrees to line up between two rows of pilings, back in, and stop.  Also, get some lines over the pilings.  Nitroglycerine anyone?  Should’ve had them in a TicTac box by the helm.  We must’ve had forty lines topside prepared for any contingency.  Old Salt was standing by on the stern.  He was none too pleased with my performance so far and kept giving helpful hints throughout the evolution. The hints were now coming in short staccato bursts as I could sense his anticipation building.  I don’t know what he was worried about.  At no time were we more than a few feet from a helpful piling or boat bow.  I judged where the turn should be, stand by….. stannnnd by……. HARD LEFT RUDDER.  Given that the boat seemed longer than the narrow channel was wide, I would only have a short period of time to swing the boat 90 degrees and line up on the row of pilings.  It was “All over but the screaming and the shouting.”  I got maybe 45 degrees of the 90 I had hoped for, and it didn’t help that I had turned early either.

The stern centered up perfectly on a piling instead of the slip opening.  Old Salt was now dancing around in place like a ruptured duck, as he watched the piling approach.  I have learned over the past few years that “powering” out of a situation like this was more dangerous than seeing the mistake through, and then planning the next move in the relative catatonic calm that followed.  After all, once I hit something stationary, at least the boat was stopped.  And stop we did.  Eleven tons, moving at two knots against an immovable object.  Lucky for me, the stern ladder protected the stern.  Welds snapped, stainless tubing bent, things jammed into other things as we came to a stop.  If we had fully extended the three-section ladder, it would’ve looked like something out of a Donkey Kong video game, just before it would’ve headed for the bottom.  Luck being with us, the ladder had also wedged itself into the stern rail stainless and even though it was almost completely separated from the boat, this deforming action, combined with the bungy cord web holding it up, kept the ladder firmly attached to the mother ship.

This was almost too much for Old Salt.  I was looking around trying to figure out what I was going to do for my next trick when Old Salt aggressively volunteered to pilot the boat into the slip.  “Here’s the helm, Old Salt has the Deck and the Conn.”  Out into the narrow channel we went.  With several masterful maneuvers, Old Salt managed to get us sideways in the channel, ready to slide right into the slip.  I don’t know how he did it, but the boat was almost as long as the channel was wide and we didn’t hit anything.  Wind and current foiled this attempt though, and we wound up with a portion of the stern laying up against the entrance piling to the slip.  From this point, we kind of man-handled the boat into the slip.  After the mooring line rodeo that followed, we finally got her tied up.  Damn, it was a big boat.

Old Salt decided that going back to work had it’s advantages and I thanked him for his help.  He may have kissed the pier when he got off the boat, but I am not quite sure.

I wondered if the two yard guys would say anything but if they did, I was already planning on pretending I did not speak English.  They must’ve had a good laugh at our expense.  I did get a chuckle later when they boarded and helped a freshly launched powerboat get into the slip next to us.  Kissed the same piling with the transom of the power boat, as we did, but they had twin screws.  I felt somewhat vindicated.

A quick check of my “Fun Meter” indicated that I had amassed more fun than the law allowed so I went below and carefully checked for leaks and such.  A quick boat nap took the edge off of the day, and after that, I locked her up and headed home. The only thing that detracted from this already abysmal evolution was that we were in the wrong slip.

A couple of days later, without any fanfare, we eased her out of the slip and made the six mile run to our home marina.  We were home.