Well, we thought that we had a place to keep our new boat. It was an expensive place, but any port in a storm… or so we thought.
Unfortunately, there was this line on the chart that was missing some critical information. The line is a bridge that we’d have to cross under, and my charts didn’t tell me how high off the water it is. Just past it is another bridge, but it’s a “swing bridge” which means it swivels in the middle to let boats too tall to go under it move past. Back to the unmarked bridge, though… A couple of hours of work on the internet and I had the bright idea of using Google streetview to “drive” over the bridge.
The bad news is that there’s no way our new boat was going to fit under that bridge. The worse news is that it doesn’t open in any manner. The result is that there’s no way for us to get TO that new berth. So, it’s back to the drawing board.
Today is calling two more marinas from the original list to see their status, and then I start calling places over in the channel islands. This is less than optimal since it involves a ferry ride over just to get to the boat (and, of course, a ferry ride back too!), adding cost and time. However, if it gives us a place to keep her, then that’s what we’ll have to deal with, this season at least.
Then there’s insurance to iron out as well – though I need to know where we are keeping her so that I know the terms on the insurance I need. 1 million liability? 2? etc. Who’d have thought that the year-long search for a boat was the easy part?