Karma and kind strangers made it happen
Issue 104 : Sept/Oct 2015
One desk-bound afternoon in May, as I juggled two phones, carrying two calls to two different area codes in a foreign country, while frantically typing an email to a third party, I realized that “The Plan,” more than six months in the making, likely wasn’t going to end in success. Here’s the back story.
My wife and I bought our first sailboat together in April 2008 and I promptly launched the search for our Next Boat. We had a plan. I hadn’t sailed in more than three decades and my wife’s sum total sailing experience amounted to three hours in a small boat during a company retreat. We knew we wanted to sail and knew we didn’t know what we didn’t know. We needed a boat big enough to be stable, but small enough to be easy to handle, one with a comfortable cabin for weekending and a private head. The rest were wants: wheel, furling foresail, lazy-jacks, inboard diesel, autopilot, weather canvas . . .
All these wants and needs were met with Whiskeyjack, our Georgian 23. Our plan was to spend a couple of seasons learning to sail aboard Whiskeyjack while we discovered what we liked, disliked, and would change with our next boat. Whiskeyjack was so close to perfect (for us) it took more than five years to find the boat that would succeed her.
We needed more space. During the last few summers, we were aboard more nights than not and realized that two people, a compact sports dog, and a mid-sized utility dog were fighting for space in a 23-footer. But our dock had the best sunsets in the marina and we were often the only inhabitants after dark. Port Dover, Ontario, is one of the hidden gems of Lake Erie’s north shore and our dock was one of the hidden gems of Port Dover.
This dock is the “small boat” dock in our marina. It has no services and low dockage rates but there is a maximum length limit. To keep that slip, we could go a little bigger, but not much.
By the fall of 2011, we knew we needed a really small center-cockpit boat with all of the amenities and benefits of our Georgian 23. That narrowed our options to precisely . . . one: an S2 8.0C, the smallest “walk-through” center-cockpit production sailboat ever built in North America and a perennial top-five finisher on every “ugly boat” list.
Locked onto a target, I began webcrawling the usual Internet sales sites with no success. Not a whole lot of 8.0Cs were built, so there’s never more than a handful on the market. The candidates fell into three categories: too far away, beyond our ridiculously tight budget, too rough to consider. Or they were all of the above.
A likely candidate
In November, 2013, karma smiled. With Whiskeyjack hauled out for the winter, I dealt with boat withdrawal by deferring household chores to chat with fellow sailors on the web and to boat shop. On craigslist, I found an S2 8.0C for sale — in New Jersey. It was more than 500 miles away . . . in a different country . . . but it didn’t look too bad in the pictures and the asking price was only twice our ridiculously small budget. I emailed the seller and asked for more photos. The boat was a little worn, a little scruffy, but she felt . . . possible.
Not real possible, however. She was 500 miles away. I had just started a new job (no vacation time), my beloved mother-in-law in New York had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and my wife was spending as much time as possible with her. No way could I consider a boat-inspection road trip.
Chatting with fellow boatnerds on Sailnet.com, I mentioned this boat, and Chip, one of the chatroom kibitzers, mentioned that his boat was slipped in the marina next door. Would I like him to take a look at the subject boat in person?
“Well, sure!”
Within a week I received an email with almost 100 pictures and a three-page report. Chip’s inspection confirmed my initial impression that the boat was a little worn, but not worn out. The fact remained, however, that the boat was priced well above our ridiculously tight budget.
A quick phone discussion with my wife let me know I was on my own for this decision. Her focus was on her mother. “If you can make it happen, make it happen. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t,” she told me. I may have been a little self-absorbed, shopping for a new boat while my wife’s mother was dying. I hate cancer because I can’t do anything about it. I fix things, build things, tinker, and putter. But I can’t fix cancer. All the pink bracelets on the planet cannot cure a woman I love and admire. That makes me angry. I dealt with my anger through the distraction of boat shopping.
An offer
I made an insultingly low offer via email. The sellers countered with an amazing reduction from their asking price, a counter that put the price just north of our ridiculously tight budget. The boat was still 500 miles away, however, and it was late November, a bad time to transport a boat over land and an impossible time for a delivery by water.
Should I wait until spring and the possibility of another S2 8.0C closer to us, geographically and economically? Should I wait a while longer, add to our boat purchase kitty, and counter the sellers’ counter in the new year? Or should I just get it over with now, get the rejection out of the way, get this darned boat out of my system, and move on?
I went all in. Within a day, I offered a figure that represented our budget ceiling. OK, a little north of our ceiling, in the low part of the attic, between the joists really, but I was sure they’d say no anyway, so why not? The sellers accepted.
Hooray! We owned a boat . . . 500 miles away . . . in another country . . . in winter . . .
Imagine this scenario: winter is close at hand, buyer and sellers have never met. Sellers want to make sure they get paid. Buyer wants to make sure the boat is not a bigger hole in the water than suspected. How to prevent an impasse?
Karma smiled again. The sellers explained that winter storage had already been paid until April, the boat was hauled out and winterized, and there was no hurry to move it. We agreed on a down payment with the balance due upon survey and satisfactory sea trial in April when the winter storage period ended.
Both parties wanted to keep things legal; we needed a document that would protect everyone’s interests and lay out the terms of sale. I discovered the kindness of strangers on the Internet once more. A fellow cyberspace boatnerd is a lawyer, who provided me with the purchase agreement he had used in the past for long-distance boat purchases. Thanks, Jim.
Purchase price set, money exchanged, t’s crossed, and i’s dotted. Now I had to find a way to get Take Time, as she was named, from there to here. While our purchase budget was ridiculously tight, our delivery budget was ludicrously small.
A matter of logistics
I identified four options for getting Take Time to her new home port:
- Delivery by water from the New Jersey coast to Port Dover via the Hudson River and Erie Canal
- Delivery by truck from the New Jersey coast to Port Dover
- Delivery by truck from the New Jersey coast to Erie, Pennsylvania, 45 miles south of Port Dover, then somehow getting ourselves across Lake Erie to collect the boat and bring her home
- Some other combination of the first two
In early January I started getting shipping estimates. The second option quickly fell off the list. The lowest estimate equaled the cost of the boat. The first option looked like the winner, as the simplest solution with the fewest moving parts. It could happen in about 10 days. If we couldn’t spare the time, we could certainly find a delivery crew to handle the job in late April.
I was kind of proud of myself. I’m a habitual procrastinator, but I had a plan in place long before the date the aforementioned plan had to be executed. Then Old Man Winter dropped the other shoe. As January 2014 rolled into February, I realized we were well and firmly stuck in the Winter that Wouldn’t End. By the end of March the Great Lakes were frozen solid. That meant a late opening for the Erie Canal.
Back to some combination of the two. Assuming our boat surveyed well and passed the sea trial and assuming I could find a hauler to do the job for our ludicrously small delivery budget, I still needed to get the boat from Erie to Port Dover. I had kind of over- looked that part. While Erie is only 45 miles south of Port Dover as the seagull flies, you cannot get there directly by car. You have to travel around the eastern end of Lake Erie, an 8-hour round trip. The options included drive over, sail back, and find someone to drive me back to retrieve my car; have someone take us over then drive back while we sailed across; or catch a ride over on another boat making the trip to Erie and sail back. All options would mean time spent organizing, while Take Time sat unattended in a transient berth racking up a bill.
A solution?
Again, karma smiled. I outlined this dilemma in the Sailnet chatroom, once again looking for opinions, and one of my fellow chatters offered to deliver it.
“Really?”
“Yeah, it’ll be fun.”
“Er . . . but don’t you live in Missouri?”
“Yeah, but it’ll be fun. My wife likes roller coasters, so we’ll stop at Cedar Point in Sandusky, go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, then roll into Erie and deliver your boat. You deliver us back to our car and we’ll stop in Niagara Falls along the way. Vacation and delivery all rolled into one.”
The Plan was starting to come together in earnest. I needed to find a hauler and the clock was ticking. On April Fool’s Day, I clicked to www.uship.com, a shipping auction site. You list your shipment and haulers bid on the job. The lowest bid or the bid that the shipper likes best, wins. Just as eBay has a “Buy it Now” option, uShip has the “Name Your Price” option, allowing a shipper to name the price he’s willing to pay to have his shipment completed. I entered my ludicrously small figure as my “Name Your Price” price and clicked “Submit.”
And karma once again smiled. Four days into the two-week auction, I got an email from uShip, informing me that my shipment was booked. A hauler had accepted my ludicrously small price! Maybe karma was only smirking this time. I had a lot of plates starting to spin. I needed to survey and sea trial this boat, which meant having it splashed, the sails bent on, and a quick systems check performed. Then the boat had to be hauled, the mast dropped, and the boat loaded onto the hauler’s waiting trailer. I would have to coordinate my schedule with the trucker’s schedule and the marina’s schedule. As early April became mid-April and then late April, the hauler had become very silent. No emails and no telephone calls.
Then it became apparent that no surveyor in New Jersey would be available until mid-June at the earliest. I opted to forgo the survey and sea trial. Now the boat wouldn’t need to be splashed and I wouldn’t have to make the trip to New Jersey. I decided to focus on the system that would be a deal-breaker: the engine. If the sellers could send me a video of the engine starting and running, I decided, we could waive the sea trial and finish the deal. Two days later I had the video: the Yanmar YSM8 cranked up and chugged along with no smoke and good water flow out of the exhaust.
I got in touch with Matt, my volunteer delivery skipper, to tell him I assumed the boat would float, not take on too much water, and safely make the crossing, letting him make the go/no go choice.
“Yeah, we’re still in. It’ll be fun.”
This world needs more Matts. But still no word from the hauler. I finally reached him only to learn that his trailer was broken and he wouldn’t be transporting anything for a couple of weeks at least. One plate crashed to the floor.
I cancelled the bid and started a new uShip auction. And karma granted me a do-over. Within two days another hauler accepted my price and the plate was back in the air.
Countdown
To recap: I have a boat in a boatyard in New Jersey that needs to have the mast dropped and be loaded on a truck. This can’t be scheduled until the boatyard knows when the truck will arrive. Meanwhile another boatyard in Pennsylvania is waiting for the boat to arrive so they can remove it from the truck and raise the mast. At that point, a delivery crew from Missouri will step aboard and deliver it across the lake. My boat must be out of the yard by the end of April, and it is now . . . April 29. I throw myself on the mercy of the boatyard and get a two-week reprieve.
Tuesday: The hauling company says they will be picking the boat up next week. I email Matt and Penny in Missouri to firm up their schedule.
Wednesday: The New Jersey yard wants to know when the truck will arrive. I pass on the hauler’s details to them to directly coordinate the schedule. I contact the yard in Erie to arrange mast stepping and launch. I’m told to call back when the pickup date in New Jersey is firm and they’ll be ready.
Friday: The hauler says the truck will pick up Tuesday or Wednesday. The marina says Tuesday won’t work, it must be Wednesday. The hauler confirms a Wednesday morning pickup.
Tuesday: The New Jersey marina says they cannot load the boat on Wednesday; they’re behind schedule, I must postpone. I cannot postpone, the truck is on its way, allegedly. The yard will have to move boats to get to mine, at my cost. Sigh. Budget now blown.
Wednesday morning: The truck driver is really sorry, but he’s running behind and still in New York. He can’t pick up until Friday. Too late at the yard. The boats have been moved at my expense.
Friday: The trucker says he will pick up Tuesday. Erie says they will be able to step the mast and launch the boat sometime in the next couple of weeks. I stifle a scream of frustration.
Saturday: Matt and Penny leave Missouri.
Sunday: In a stunning flash of brilliance, I come up with a new plan bypassing the Erie boatyard. The mast is deck- stepped and the shoal-draft boat can be launched from the trailer. The trailer must have a winch to permit the mast to be stepped. We don’t need no stinkin’ boatlift! I text the truck driver with a new destination: the public boat ramp in Erie.
Monday: Matt and Penny arrive in Erie and promptly want to leave, but must wait for the boat to arrive.
Tuesday: My boat is picked up in New Jersey.
Wednesday: She arrives in Erie. The trailer has a winch but it doesn’t work. Matt decides to secure the mast to the deck and make the crossing under power. He and Penny load Take Time with gear and provisions, start the engine, ensure everything is working and nothing is leaking, and depart Erie. A storm warning is issued, but they’re out of cell-phone range.
Wednesday night: The storm blows through. Take Time comes through unscathed.
Thursday morning: Matt and Penny arrive in Port Dover. The boat is sound. The crew is safe. Matt admits he has never sailed a boat this large and has never sailed on a lake this large. He does not stop grinning for several hours. I step aboard the boat I purchased six months before and 500 miles away. She is better than I expect, better than described. Karma is grinning.
Faith restored
It’s easy, in our era of cynicism, to think the world has become a meaner place, that people are less willing to help each other, that everyone is out only for themselves, and any luck one has is likely bad. This project got us more than just a boat that we love, it reaffirmed my faith in the kindness of strangers.
My mother-in-law passed away in early March. She loved boats and the ocean. The weekend before Take Time was picked up in New Jersey, her ashes were committed to the ocean to be carried by the Gulf Stream home to her native Norway. Fair winds, Bjorg. Thank you for any influence your spirit had on the good luck we had with this adventure.
Brian Jones started sailing at the age of nine. His wife, Louise, grew up in a boating family. Together, they have sailed Lake Erie for eight seasons, most of them successfully. Brian and Louise summer aboard Karma, their S2 8.0C, in Port Dover, Ontario.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
