


We arrived at Town Creek Marina on April 4 with plans to rent a car to drive back to Virginia the next day for our second Covid shots, to pick up our recertified life raft, and to get our car and shuttle it down the coast to wait for us at Zimmerman Marine Holden Beach. Even though we had a reservation, they had no cars available on the 5th but assured us they would have cars the next morning. The representative called as we were pulling into the lot on the 6th (the day of our Covid shot appointments in VA), to say they still had no cars. Oh, no you don’t. We are not missing those appointments. We’ll take anything with wheels. The manager’s car? A scooter, perhaps? Todd and Susie are getting to Virginia! Well, since we were already there (and gently pitching a fit), they came up with ONE vehicle – a very large pick-up truck. Fine. Keys, please. We’ll take it and leave you to call the other 23 reservations to tell them you have no cars. So, we made it to get our shots, but the life raft wasn’t ready due to some internal corporate office miscommunication on the part of the folks managing Viking Life Raft. Ugh. We got back to the boat with the life raft around midnight (and returned the rented truck on time the next morning, thank you very much – didn’t want someone else to not have a vehicle to go with their reservation).
We decided to stay an extra night to rest up after that excitement. While resting, i.e. working inside the boat the next afternoon, we had our first accident. Bang! We got hit AT the dock. A center console tried to drive under our bow and his T-top jammed the anchors up into the bow pulpit. He was stuck there for a bit while pulling his T-top apart to get unwedged. The damage was fairly minor to our boat, and the other guy ended up taking care of it, of course. Let’s see, first accident? Check it off!
All’s well that ends well.