Curare left Florida on Monday December 5, 2022, the start of her grand road adventure, and we flew home to the west coast of Canada to await her arrival. We had looked at Google maps and figured the road trip would be around 4000 miles more or less, which at a distance of 600 miles per day would be seven or eight days of driving, so we started to plan for a December 12th or 13th arrival date.
LE had asked Linda, the wife of Stan (the truck driver), to email her when the truck was about three days from Bellingham so when we had not heard anything by December 11 GG phoned the office in Florida and asked for an update. It was bad news. The truck blew it's transmission in Kentucky, only a two day drive from Florida, and it would not get going again until December 12. Then on December 14 LE received an email from Linda with the news that the truck was stopped in Iowa because winter storm Diaz had shut down roads in Nebraska and Wyoming. Despite the weather the truckers hoped to be in Bellingham Monday or Tuesday, December 19th or 20th. Upon Curare's arrival GG and LE had planned to unload her from the truck and motor back to Canada, but this updated arrival date meant they would most likely miss Christmas Day festivities. In the original "shipping Curare home" scenario, started in early October, we would have been back in Canada at the beginning of December and had tentatively organized a large Christmas gathering. Luckily we had not made any concrete plans.
We did not want to drive our truck to to the USA because there was no one to drive it back to Canada, so instead we took an Amtrak train leaving on December 19 at 5:45 P.M. from Vancouver and arriving at 7:41 P.M. in Bellingham. What could be simpler? As the train departed Vancouver it was starting to snow and when we arrived in Bellingham it was still snowing, the temperature had fallen to -5 C, and there was about 10 cm of snow on the ground.
GG had made reservations at a hotel near the train station so we trudged three blocks through the deserted snowy streets and crossed our fingers that the snow would stop. It did not. The snow continued falling all night and next morning the temperature was -12 C. When we departed the hotel at 7:45 A.M. there was maybe 20 to 25 centimetres of accumulated snow, none of the streets had been ploughed, and no one had shovelled their sidewalks. We thought we would take a taxi because the Landings at Colony Wharf marina was 3 miles away, but nothing was stirring so we started to walk, carrying our packs. It was not easy trekking through the snow, we should have brought snowshoes.
We arrived at the marina at 9:15 A.M. and found the door locked with a handwritten sign that said "Office closed today due to snow". We could not believe it! GG had phoned the day before to tell them the truck, and Curare, were arriving the morning of December 20 and they said they were expecting us. However, the main marina gate was open so we walked into the yard and, as we were wondering what to do, we saw our boat on the truck travelling down the street. About that time a pick-up truck stopped, the window rolled down, and a man asked "what are you doing here?". This was the owner of the marina. We told him who we were and the name of our boat and he said "I did not expect you today because of the weather". Then he said his crane was non-operational. Surely GG could have been told this the previous afternoon when he phoned the marina; the crane did not break overnight. The truck arrived about 10 minutes later and promptly got stuck in the unploughed yard which meant there was additional time to get the crane working.
GG, LE and Stan started to shovel but it was hopeless, the truck would not budge. It was now -10 C and both GG and LE were cold, despite the exertion of shovelling, so we left for lunch. When we returned no one was around, the truck crew was hiding in their cab and the marina owner had left, sending us a text that they would try to lift Curare tomorrow. It was only 1 P.M. and, although it was still bitterly cold, we decided we had time to get the mast off the truck and unwrap it, maybe even put some of the standing rigging back on. But first we had to shovel a path to the truck so that we could wheel the hand cart to transport the mast to a working area. This was a distance of slightly less than a football field and it took about one hour.
We successfully got the mast off of the truck and started to attach the standing rigging but we did not get far because our hands were cold, the proper tools were on board Curare,and we had to find a place to stay. GG had only reserved last night's hotel for the one night, the original plan was to be on Curare that evening, and we did not want to make the morning's long, snowy, trek again. We eventually found a place that was slightly closer, but it involved an uphill hike. LE didn't know which was worse - the 3 miles in the morning or the uphill in the late afternoon? The saga continues...
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