After Curare was offloaded from the trans-Atlantic freighter on Monday morning we motored north up the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) to a designated anchorage in Lake Santa Barbara. When we first investigated anchoring in Fort Lauderdale FL, LE contacted several friends who either live there, or had lived there in the past, and all of them said "anchoring is not possible, you have to go to a marina". However, due to a number of compounding issues, there were no marina slips available, so using a combination of the Navionics App, the Active Captain App and the online Waterway Guide LE found this anchorage, and it was in an excellent location. The word lake is a misnomer as is not really a lake, it is more of a large indent on the west side of the ICW but it had good holding, and it had a little park where we could leave the dinghy when we went ashore. But best of all it was within walking distance of Complete Marine, the place where we had arranged to have Curare put onto the transport truck.
Motoring north up the ICW we had to go under several draw bridges, these are located about 2 miles from each other and open either on the hour or on the half hour. All of them are staffed by bridge operators who have to be contacted by VHF radio, if you do not contact them the bridge does not open, not even if you are obviously waiting. Luckily we had been warned about this so we had a smooth trip up the ICW and were anchored by 1130.
This is when things started to go awry, despite all of GG's weeks of careful planning and organizing. What was to have been a six day trip turned into 10 days so we had to keep extending the rental car return date and, until our boat was on the truck, we could not make a plane reservation to fly home. The original day for loading the truck was Thursday, which meant we could leave that afternoon or at the latest Friday. But first we had to remove the mast with a crane truck so GG and the marina scheduled that for Wednesday. Tuesday afternoon we received a phone call from the trucking company that the driver's wife was on jury duty. They travel as a team, if one can't go the other won't either. We were told a different driver might possibly be here on Friday, but it would only be to load Curare and then she would sit on the truck until the original driver became available. We were OK with this plan. At this point GG tried to phone the marina to cancel Wednesday's crane truck but no one answered the phone.
On Wednesday morning we were wondering what to do about the scheduled crane truck when the marina phoned and said they could not get the crane truck until Friday. This was a good thing for the revised trucking plan but it would not have worked with the original plan, and it meant we would not be going home Friday; it would now be Saturday at the latest. We agreed, with the proviso that the crane truck should be there early Friday morning (the truck would be there at noon and we needed time to prepare the mast for shipping).
Meanwhile we were preparing the boat for trucking, living on board in a pile of belongings and on-deck equipment and taking our showers using a solar shower bag - it was exactly like camping in a small, crowded, tent. The highest part of Curare, when on the truck, could only be 13 feet 8 inches, because higher than that is considered over-height and requires special permits. As a result we had to remove the majority of deck hardware. We unbolted the aft arch and bow pulpit, took off the stanchions and lifelines and removed the dodger frame. Once the mast was removed the highest part of Curare was the top of the wind vane rudder, which could not easily be removed, and the final height measurement was 11 feet 6 inches, a big sigh of relief. It looked like we were back on schedule and organized again.
Comments