Just because we are currently sitting it out by ourselves in a dusty service yard, doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the Kentucky Derby, right? At least that’s what we thought. So, the day before, I washed/oiled the galley and salon walls and cabinetry, put out what few small Triple Crown decorations we kept, and prepped for a decadent meal of Kentucky Hot Brown Sandwiches with a Tex Mex Potato Salad (which has nothing whatsoever to do with Kentucky or the Derby but sounded good), and homemade chocolate nut fudge for dessert.

Derby day dawned bright and sunny in Holden Beach, NC. After spending a few hours scrubbing the hull, we decided to take the dinghy for a ride before getting cleaned up to watch the 147th Run for the Roses and devour our tasty dinner (along with some bourbon, of course). When we extended the crane from the flybridge, we heard POP hiss-s-s-s-s-s… and the dinghy slowly lowered itself into the water. Uh-oh, who’s driving this thing? No more crane. Hmmm. After taking a look around and not spotting any hair-on-fire crisis items, we decided to take our joy ride before tackling this new problem of a busted crane. The dinghy was, after all, now in the water with no way of returning it aboard. We spent an hour or so and used the dinghy to zip down and explore the ICW in the sunshine. Nice. All good things must come to an end though, and the time came to clean up and get ready for the race. With the crane out of commission, we found a place to temporarily dock the dinghy where it would be sheltered from most of the wakes from passing boats. (Zimmerman Holden Beach is right ON the ICW, and a great number of boaters seem to have no idea what that “No Wake” sign at the nearby Fuel Dock means.) The boom was still extended with the cable and hook dangling precariously in the wind along the port side, however, so while I headed to the shower, Todd tried to raise the cable and bring the boom back to the boat to safely secure it until we could pursue the repair to the crane. Oh no! There goes another hydraulic line. He threw down shop towels, rags, and all the absorbent pads we owned, and then heard me turn off the shower. As I emerged, clean, happy, and unsuspecting, he met me with a terrible, stricken look and said, “This is bad.” When I asked how bad, he replied, “Very bad.” Given the look on his face, I asked if we were sinking. His responding look seemed to indicate that would have been preferable. Say what?? Worse than sinking?

Okay, it was bad. There are seven lines that run from the crane through a cabinet under a built-in seat on the flybridge – a nice, large, empty, fiberglass cabinet. Nothing in there but hydraulic lines. Well, you know how stuff runs downhill? Turns out the lines didn’t burst at the upper end of their runs in the aforementioned nice, large, empty fiberglass cabinet and thus contain the hydraulic fluid. No-o. They burst at the lower end of the lines, which is… wait for it… in the salon ceiling! Hydraulic fluid was raining out along the seams of the ceiling panels in a waterfall directly over the newly upholstered settee!

The resulting not-so-funny comedy of slip-sliding in hydraulic fluid on teak floors while trying to simultaneously unscrew oily staves and ceiling panels, save what could be saved in the salon, and contain the spillage is another story. Worst. Derby. Day. Ever.

On the bright side:

1. No one was hurt
2. The line burst while the heavy dinghy was safely hanging over the side, rather than half-on and half-off the deck
3. We were at a service yard and not anchored out somewhere
4. The yard had a spare boat lift to store our dinghy out of the water until the hydraulic lines could be replaced
5. And, finally, there was plenty of bourbon on board (which we got to around midnight…)

---

And the Fuel Dock next door

Spending an extra day in Beaufort threw us off by a day. We knew we’d now be arriving at Zimmerman Marine Holden Beach on Saturday afternoon with no one there to catch a line. We thought we somewhat knew how to aim for slack tide. Oh, how wrong we were. There was a 25-knot wind running against the not-at-all-slack tide. The ICW channel runs at exactly 90-degrees to the few slips at Zimmerman Marine. All we have to do is turn in and tie up to any empty slip. Convenient, right? (Ha!) So, headsets on, Todd’s at the helm on the flybridge and I’m on the walkaround with line in hand, prepared with the instruction of, “Okay, Honey, when I get her close to the dock (which was not even the full length of the boat), you toss the line to snag a cleat or a piling, anything, to pull her in.” Right. On it. Wait. How much does this boat weigh, again? Deep breaths all around, we gave it a try. No go. Not happening. Couldn’t get her swung in there. The wind and current fighting with all they had kept us from getting even close. So, he took her back out into the channel, brought her about, and we prepared to try again. Still nothing doing. Back out into the channel, bring her about, try again. How about stern in? No. Back out into the channel, bring her about, try again. How about approaching from the other direction? No. Back out into the channel, bring her about… You get the drift. Oh, and the channel is fairly narrow here, and I did mention it’s Saturday afternoon, so every time we had to turn this 60′ around, we blocked the traffic in the channel. After nearly an hour, in the headsets, I can hear Todd sadly muttering about not knowing what else to try, and he can hear me desperately praying for God to still the current just for a few minutes. Probably gave God a pretty good chuckle. The folks on the opposite shoreline with their camera phones seemed to be chuckling. The diners at Loulou’s Restaurant that we repeatedly passed as we came about seemed to be chuckling. After many unsuccessful attempts and the loss of both the bow and stern thrusters, an angel (I swear, sent by God), who was at Zimmerman Marine doing landscaping, JW, took pity and came to our rescue. Now we had someone on the dock to whom I could at least throw a line IF we could get close enough. Got it! Amazingly, JW was able to wrap a piling with barely enough line to go around and hold her against the current until Todd could leap down onto the dock and help fight to literally muscle her in. He had to leap because we were bow in and the short dock didn’t reach the whole length of the boat, thus preventing us from using the normal stern doors that are nicely level with the dock. Sheesh. Thank goodness we have an upper door from which he could make the jump. (Note: this left me on the boat with no way for Todd to climb back aboard. Now I start praying for Todd and JW to tap their inner he-man selves [or for Thor to show up] so the boat doesn’t end up back out in the ICW with only me aboard.) At any rate, after almost 90 minutes, we finally got her in there, secured the lines, put out the step stool so I could also get off the boat, and headed straight over to LouLou’s for martinis. Do you know they didn’t even give us a discount for the floorshow??

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.