Alpha has spent the last decade or so parked under the pine trees in Nevada City, California. Nevada City is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, and it’s about a 5 hour drive from my house to Alpha’s former location. It’s pretty difficult to work on a boat when it’s located 5 hours away, so it was obvious that she had to get moved closer to home. Before that could happen, I had to get the trailer fixed up. There’s an earlier blog post about that.
Everything came together this past Sunday, January 20th 2019. I had arranged for dry storage at the Sunset Marina, right across the slough from Bethel Island. Bethel Island is located in the heart of the Sacrament / San Joaquin River Delta here in California. Bethel Island is an hour and 45 minute drive from my house. That’s not exactly “close” but it’s a lot better than 5 hours! Also the dry storage there is quite affordable. It will be a good place to store her while I work on her.
Bright and early on Sunday morning I got in my truck and drove the 2 hours to Bethel Island. It took two hours because I’d never been there before and it was raining. I got to Bethel Island, found the U-Haul truck rental place and was on my way by 11:00 AM. I then drove up to Nevada City, a 140 mile trip in the U-Haul. As soon as I turned off of the main highway, Interstate 5, it started raining. It came down in sheets, intermittently. When I got to the boat, it started hailing! Oh, joy.
I checked the tires and then my friend Richard, whom I’ve been corresponding with for months about the boat, drove over to help. We got the straps on, made sure everything seemed OK, and then the rain stopped. I figured this was a sign so I took off.
Here's the rig, U-Haul and Piper, stopped to make sure the straps are all staying on and the tires aren't flat.
There were no issues on the way down, though it took three hours to get to Bethel Island. The trailer towed straight and true, everything stayed where it was supposed to on the highway, and I got there without incident.
On Monday I cleaned about 30 pounds of pine needles out of the inside of the boat and sorted the rigging. Turns out that only one shroud need replacing, and all the turnbuckles are there. There’s a hole and fitting for a knotmeter, well below the waterline but there are two plugs for the hole, in the boat. So now she’s settled in her new home, covered so that nothing else falls into the cockpit and it’s time to get working on other projects!
