Yesterday my girlfriend and my husband and I went to take the plastic winter cover off our boat, erect the canvas and take inventory of what was still on board and what we still need to find in order to start our boating season next weekend. Stepping on the boat yesterday brought back wonderful memories of when we first bought her (used) in 2001 and the slapstick comedy of her maiden voyage. (She's a 1989 2655 Bayliner Ciera.) We had owned a boat previously (21' cuddy cabin) so we had, what we thought at the time, enough knowledge to get us from Point A to Point B without much difficulty. Uh yeah. Then reality set in.
By the time our family of six got the boat loaded and organized to set sail, it was pretty late. We tucked the kids down below and off we went. The broker we bought the boat from had parked our boat in a slip in a marina full of really expensive boats. Some of them were really pretty. Because the shifter on our boat was not working properly (worked fine when we test drove her) and it was really windy, we almost came to know a few of those pretty boats intimately.
After much maneuvering and "oh shit's", Henry wound up backing us out of the smooth water of the marina to the lake where the water was rough and the wind was howling. It was going to be a long night.
At some point in our voyage in started raining heavily and Henry made the decision that he just could not drive anymore and we started looking for a place to tie up to get some rest before continuing on to our marina in Port Huron. In the dark we found a dock, tied her up and went below to get some sleep where we discovered that the blankets covering our kids were soaking wet and the hatches were leaking as if they had been left wide open. (They were firmly closed.)
After Henry and I got some rest, it was daylight now, we untied the boat and set sail for our marina. I don't remember anything significant happening during this portion of our trip but what happened once we got to the marina and were trying to park our boat in our slip is etched deeply in my brain.
By the time we pulled into the marina it was pouring rain again -- and I do mean pouring. Our slip was located next to a metal retaining wall so I was dispatched to the bow to keep us from colliding with it. So I'm standing on the bow of this boat, in a bright yellow raincoat (boaters term: foul weather gear), sweatpants that were soaking wet, no shoes and armed with a dock pole. We're slowly cruising up the dockway to our slip and as we get close Henry throws the shifter in reverse. Unknown to us at the time, the cotter pin holding the propeller on the shaft didn't exist so the propeller fell off. (The cruise up the lake/river in forward gear was enough to keep the prop on the shaft.) We had just enough residual cruising speed and momentum that we slammed into the retaining wall, bending the bow rail.
Standing on my tip toes, reaching high over my head, I grab the edge of the retaining wall to keep us from going anywhere. Oh, and it's still pouring down rain. After what seemed like an eternity marina staff finally showed up to help us get her the rest of the way in the slip and tied off. We instantly (we found out later) became the Beverly Hillbillies of B dock. Several of our dock mates thought we were drunk and until we could get the Lexan replaced in the hatches we had to cover the bow of our boat with a blue tarp. How very attractive! So that was our maiden voyage.
Our home, for the first four boating seasons, was only about a half-hour drive so our choice of marina was pretty convenient. Plus they had a lot of nice amenities: heated swimming pool, showers, jacuzzi, basketball courts. And an even bigger bonus to our choice of location was the easy access to Lake Huron.
Stepping on the boat yesterday also flung me back in time to August 2004 when I tried to overdose and our boat sat in its well in Port Huron unused and neglected. When we put "her" (Her name is "Annie's Song") in storage for the winter that year and we couldn't have imagined she would stay in dry dock for two years as our lives spun seemingly out of control.
The fall and winter of 2004 I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and undergoing ECT's. Hunter was also in and out of psychiatric hospitals as we tried to find medication to shorten the width of his mood swings and quiet the voices in his head.
The summer of 2005 came and went and Hunter was in a residential facility. He was a danger to himself and other's and it was our only hope. Visiting times at (and the location of) that facility were not convenient (of course) but I visited him at every opportunity given. I missed a lot of work and put a lot of miles on my car during that last hospitalization (that lasted 206 days). I was also still struggling with finding the right medication for myself and we, Henry and I, didn't think we had what it would take to put the boat in the water and actually use it.
Spring 2006 came along and we thought long and hard again about whether or not we could justify putting the time, money and effort in to putting the boat in the water vs. how much we would actually use it. It was a tough decision to keep her on land for another season but the decision in hindsight, was the right one.
This spring the question came up again of "do we" or "don't we" or "do we sell?" The marina we used originally was no longer convenient because we had moved and it would have taken about an hour and a half to get there. So I suggested we put her in the lake about 20 minutes from our house -- which is where we kept our smaller boat.
Henry gave it some thought and decided it was a great idea so we found a marina, picked a well and next weekend our boating season will officially start. Our family has great memories of the lake where our boat will be. There are several small islands, the water is much warmer than Lake Huron and it's three hours closer to Cedar Point than Port Huron. :-)
(I highly recommend driving a boat to Cedar Point and parking it in their marina. It is a awesome ride, inexpensive to dock (around $40, includes water and electricity) and you get in the park an hour earlier than the general public. Another cool thing is going up the Millennium roller coaster, looking down and seeing your boat sitting in the marina.)Because most things come full circle, the marina we chose for this season is the same marina we set sail from on our maiden voyage.
Standing on the deck of "Annie's Song" again felt like coming home. I didn't realize how much I missed the comfort of her until I was standing in the galley overwhelmed with so many happy memories and funny adventures we, as a family, have had with her. That first season it seemed that every time we took her out onto Lake Huron it would rain or hail. It was always clear, blue skies when we left dock (and the marine forecast always told us what we could see) in the blink of an eye we would find ourselves in a horrible storm. One storm produced golf ball sized hail.
One Fourth of July we took the boat up Lake Huron and anchored out from a town called Lexington. It was the most spectacular celebration I have ever seen. From our spot on the lake we were able to see fireworks from several surround communities in addition to private firework shows up and down the beach. It was truly breathtaking.
Henry and I spent our wedding night (June 30, 2002) anchored on Lake Huron sleeping on an air mattress on the stern's deck, under the stars. I still have the "Just Married" flag I bought and we flew proudly from our boat for the rest of the summer.
So, "Annie's Song", welcome home. I missed you.
