September 10, 2010: Ken called to say he might make it in later tonight, but for sure tomorrow morning! we'll be headed out to Fort Washington Marina in the morning to see what sort of shape she's in!

September 7, 2010: Our driver, Ken, called to say he's on the road!

September 1, 2010: Sea Heather is being transfered to the US truck provided by Deep Water Boat Transport, but won't be on the road until Tuesday, September 7th due to Labor Day.

August 31, 2010: Got word that the boat made it across the border without any problems.

August 30, 2010: Boat is on the road to Nogales.

August 28, 2010: We got up expecting a long day, but we were done before noon! We cleared the deck of anything that could blow away, tied down anything that couldn't, and made sure things wouldn't bounce around too much during the transit.

So I've looked all over the place, and it's pretty hard to get a firm handle on what it costs to ship a big boat like Sea Heather across the country. We're not afraid to publish our expenses because we feel it can be very helpful for someone, so here you go!

Boat transport cost breakdown:

$447 - 2 plane tickets to Tucson, AZ.

$361 -1 week crappy rental car with the Mexican liability insurance ($29/day!).

$399 - Crappy marine survey that I could have done better myself, but it's required for insurance.

$860 - One year of full coverage insurance for a 33 year young boat including transportation by truck provided by Markel American Insurance.

$175 - Yard and launch fee at Marina Seca.

$3435 - Hauling, unstepping the mast, shrink-wrapping, and trucking to Tucson. Marina San Carlos quoted us $3500 for just the trucking, so this came in well under the quote.

$500 - Marco Crane in Tucson, AZ to lift our boat onto the US truck. Flat rate. They have lifted the Space Shuttle by the way, fun fact.

$6500 - Quoted and actual cost by Deep Water Boat Transport contracted by Dudley Boat Transport to truck from Tucson, AZ to Fort Washington Marina in Maryland... ouch!

$200 (?) - Guess on cost to lift the boat off the trailer into the dry storage yard at Fort Washington Marina. I'll update this when we get the bill.

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$12,877 - Grand total yard to yard.

Now we sit and wait, and hope she makes it to DC!

August 27, 2010:

Our hual appointment was at 8am, so we got up early, took down and folded the sails, and made sure the engine would get us to the other side of the harbor 100 yards away. At 8am sharp we motored over and they were ready for the next step, hauling out..

We then had some more Huevos Benedictine at the Embarcadero restaurant at Marina San Carlos.

Our appointment for mast removal was at 10am. We prepared by taking picures of all the connections that we had to disconnect, loosened the rigging so that we could just pull the pins at lower end of each shroud, took down the radar arch, and did a bit of prep-work for the next step.

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Getting ready to take the mast down. All the pins have been pulled.

Paul disconnecting the wiring in the mast. Three connections: two 3-wire plugs wrapped in electrical tape, and one RF connector for the VHF antenna. Couldn't have been easier. That and a small bead of marin sealant is all th holds the mast down at the deck step. It sits over a little foot-pad that keeps it from sliding sideways. I guess that's why it's important to replace wire rigging every 10 years!

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The mast got shrink-wrapped. The only thing we had to do was unbolt the spreaders. The stays, roller furler, and running rigging were all left connected. Everything just got folded down, and wrapped together. Easy!

August 26, 2010: We got up early and headed down to Marina San Carlos to have some breakfast. Why do Mexican marina restaurants produce such wonderful eggs benedict? And for 45 pesos (4 USD)! Awesome.

We went back to the hotel to meet our Marine Surveyor. This is the part where you dish out $400 so that someone will write down a bunch of obvious facts about your boat so that you can get insurance in the US. There is absolutely no government ovrsight, regulation, or certification process for a Marine Surveyor (can you say "sign me up for that job!"?). Anyway, we chatted with him, he corrected some stuff on his paper, then we parted ways. He would write up the survey and send it to our insurance company.

We jumped into our crappy rental car again and zipped on over to Marina Seca at Marina Real. They were expecting us, so we were quickly into the yard and working on our boat.

We pulled off the new sunbrella cover we had made by a local when we were down here in the Spring of 2009, dodged giant jumping spiders, rigged the mainsail and staysail, reconnected the poor dried out batteries, tested the VHF radio (dead), tested the handheld (dead), tested the other handheld (dead), and figured we were ready to go! So we called over Miguel who brought his hydraulic trailer to tow us over to the water.

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After a smooth launch came the moment of reconing. Will the engine start? YES! ONE CRANK! With luck like this today what could possibly go wrong?!?

Doesn't Saesha look happy? This is how she looked just before the engine died! So much for our luck! At least we had rigged the bare minimum of sails, and with a little struggling we were able to get the main and staysail up, and we were on our way.

We actually ended up having a beautiful day of sailing in 10-15 knots of steady wind which died to a whisper just as we pulled into the anchorage outside of Marina San Carlos.

We dropped the hook, and Paul got to work changing the fuel filter on the engine and repriming it. We snuck into Marina San Carlos just as the sun was setting. A long day, but all told it couldn't have gone much better.

August 25, 2010, 4am: We woke up to catch our flight out of DCA (Yes, Washington, D.C.) destined ultimately for San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico. A couple of months earlier we decided that Sea Heather could no long sit idle, in a dry dusty boat yard, 2000 miles from where we have been living for the past three years. You see, we reentered the "work force" and now have 9-5, M-F jobs that keep us fairly busy most of the time. San Carlos is too distant to visit over the weekends. So what else should we do with our new found income than squander it on a rediculously expensive proposition to truck Sea Heather across two countries?

We arrived in Tucson right on time. Grabbed our crappy rental car from Enterprise and looked for the nearest marine store to pick up a starting battery (assuming that the two sitting on the boat had dried up during the last year and a half since we last visited San Carlos.

We crossed the border in Nogales in the early afternoon and it was already touching 100 degrees.

Four hours later we pulled into San Carlos, checked into our hotelito, and grabbed our first set of carne asada tacos! Yum!

Of couse, it was night time now and still over 100 degrees... this was going to be brutal.