Friday

Friday dawned bright and beautiful, but with the promise of strong winds. We had decided that with the weather forecast as it was, we would go ahead and leave for home. We tidied up the boat and began to make her ready for the long ride to Knoxville. Rich advised that we should get her out of the water as soon as possible because the wind was picking up quickly. He pulled the boat out of the slip with a dock line while walking along the seawall, gave the bow a little push and then I had enough room to head out without bumping into the next door neighbor, a slum trash Island Packet. (Jealousy rears its ugly head here). I goosed the Honda and we headed out of the channel along the seawall, turned right back towards the bridge, and the boat ramp.

I could feel the wind and waves as soon as we cleared the seawall. Probably about 15 to 20 knots. Rich had walked back up to the Neuse River Suites to get the truck and meet me at the ramp. I circled off the ramp for a few minutes until he arrived, and then I eased up to the windward side of the dock and tied up. For all of the wind, there were several folks going out to fish either for fun or for work, so we rigged the extension tongue on the trailer while waiting for the ramp to clear.
Eventually, it was our turn, and Rich backed the trailer in the water. By now the water was white capping and getting pretty rough even in the harbor. I spent the next 30 minutes in extreme discomfort as we tried to get the boat on the trailer and snugged up with the winch. By the time we were successful, I was exhausted and the boat had quite a few new scratches.
My project this winter will be to weld on some guides and rework the trailer winch so that I can reach it without laying full length over the bow on top of the cleat and under the bow pulpit while straining my guts out to crank the dang thing.
An hour spent taking down the mast, storing all the sails and rigging, retracting the tongue, and we were almost ready to go. We then noticed the boat had slid back from the bow stop about two inches during retrieval and the whole trailer was flexing. Another 30 minutes and two large ratchet straps enabled us to slide the boat snugly up against the bow stop.

In Rich's driveway

A quick stop to get some diesel fuel, and Oriental was in the rear view mirror. A relatively uneventful 11 hours later, I dropped Rich off at his house and then Blues Image was back in the driveway.