The longer story – shipping Shearwater to San Francisco

Although this is a bit delayed, I thought I’d put together a post on what we did to get Shearwater from Texas to California, in preparation for the start of the Pac Cup.  It wasn’t a walk in the park. The next post of picking her up in San Francisco is awesome though, so stay tuned! We’d been spending a good number of weekends in Seabrook – trying to move through our to do list as much as possible before the boat was suddenly 4 hours by plane, instead of 4 hours by car (on a bad Houston traffic day – not too unusual).  Things became a little easier and less stressful when we discovered, by accident, that a doggie daycare was less than a half mile from the boat – so we suddenly were able to better accommodate the dogs, who have grown decidedly less excited about time on the boat. We set aside a long weekend to make sure we had time to deal with the unexpected, should it arise, before we loaded the boat on the truck on Monday.  We had a number of items to take care of, including:

• Picking up a spinnaker that had been recut to a smaller size, thanks to Terry and crew at Quantum Sails in Seabrook.
• Vacuum-sealing (this required hijacking a vacuum that we found in the gym facilities at the marina) the two spinnakers that are not in ATN socks in plastic space bags that will keep them as dry as possible, for as long as possible.
• Getting the boat over to South Texas Yacht Services by dragging the keel through Clear Lake’s shallow sludge where we unstepped the mast, (this took a lot of fancy crane work, including having 4 big guys come stand on the cabintop so that the deck did not pull off the boat with the mast).  Shearwater was then hauled out of the water and set on blocks, so that we could spend the next 2 ½ days making her freeway-ready.

Removing the forestay – the rig is on its way down!

Unstepping the mast ended up being more of a challenge – the mast boot was on tight, but the small army on the cabintop helped keep the deck in place as the mast finally let loose.

• On Saturday, Ernst (US Boat Haulers LLC) – the super yacht-hauler extraordinaire stopped by to check on things, answer questions, and talk about racing, sailing and just having fun on sailboats.  We got to meet his daughter, a marine engineer in-training at UT-Galveston who is about to set sail on a working vessel and test herself out at sea.  I also learned, much to my great relief given my professional life, that Ernst’s truck is a new, 2013-model year diesel that meets EPA’s cleanest vehicle emissions standards (this was not a deal killer, but I can’t tell you the relief I felt at not having my boat shipped by a nasty, dirty truck that was spewing harmful diesel exhaust with dangerous particulate matter and smog-forming oxides of nitrogen to the world).

This truck meets EPA’s cleanest emissions standards – 0.2 g/bhp-hr for NOx and 0.01 g/bhp-hr for particulate matter. I still wouldn’t sniff the exhaust, but the difference between this truck and a 5-10 year old truck is night and day.

• Over the course of the weekend, we worked nonstop – installing new galley sink drains; doing some electrical projects on the mast; prepping the mast and rigging for the transport; trying to seal up the thru-hull from our old marine head discharge, and finally removing the lifelines, bow and stern pulpits, as well as the dodger.

• We also had the yard folks put a coat of Coppercoat on the bottom of the keel and on the leading edges of the rudder and keel (since we had tested out the existing Coppercoat in a strenuous use test by sitting on the bottom while in the Florida Keys).  Amazingly, though, the rest of the bottom looked really good when the boat emerged from the water during haulout, and several of the yard workers commented on the condition, asking what we used (full disclosure – we “installed” Coppercoat in April 2012, and have had a diver clean the bottom 3.5 times…our snorkel cleaning counted for half a real cleaning).  One even went as far to say that it was the sort of thing to put someone like him out of business – I’m not sure that is entirely true, but we were pretty happy nevertheless.  Our expectation had been that Coppercoat would not be as great in the warmer waters…but so happy to be proven wrong!

On Monday, we were at the boat, ready to do what was needed to help get the boat loaded and safely on her way.  The process to get her loaded, secured, and protected took nearly 3 hours, but Ernst made it look pretty easy and straightforward.  We learned a few things, including that duct tape exists that won’t leave a nasty residue ($30/roll for the kick-ass 3M tape) and that the Moby radar reflector we had installed on our spreaders crushes pretty much instantly when the weight of the mast is rested on it.  We had requested that we be named on his insurance certificate, which helped us feel better about the transport, as our insurance company was very explicit with the LACK of coverage we would have if we used a commercial transport agency to move the boat, rather than a buddy pulling it with his F950 in exchange for a six-pack of beer.

Loading Shearwater onto Ernst’s custom trailer that has a keel box to accommodate deeper draft sailboats.

Eventually, everyone was set, and the only hurdle left for Ernst to be on his way was a row of trees that lined the road on the way out.  The yard guys offered to ride on the boat with axes and saws, but Ernst thought that we might be okay…and he was right.  A few branches went flying, but that was all.

The trees leaving the boat yard left no room to spare. We brushed a few on the way out.

Suddenly, Shearwater was off, and we were on our way back to Austin. Over the next few days, we received text messages from Ernst on his progress, and by the end of the week, it was clear – he was going to have no problem meeting the original schedule that allowed us to meet him and possibly relaunch by Friday. Wow.  Shearwater was delivered, as promised.  Thanks so much, Ernst.

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