Blue

On Wednesday race night, I arrived down at the club and discovered that the boat had been moved to the Blue Crane. The Blue Crane is a great crane for larger boats who need to get a haul out during the season (see above: Notorious, a 30 footer getting some TLC). It is not so good when you are trying to launch quickly in windy conditions. The area around the Blue Crane isn’t paved so it is difficult to get the trailer moved into position. It is not a race night dry sail crane.

The move was necessitated by the repairs to the breakwater on the Club's south side. The construction equipment needed space so some boats had to be moved to create that space.Although there were some comments about how easy it is to use the Blue Crane, e.g. Kev and Notorious,  there were surprisingly (not) no volunteers! The three J 24s were selected. (The selection process remains somewhat of a mystery to me.) The Blue Crane would be a big negative on my 2012 sailing. The Blue Crane made me feel blue.

I asked for a mooring. Leaving the boat in the water is not ideal but at least it would allow me to have convenient access to the boat; it would make the best of a bad set of options. The Club agreed.

 

Aristosera temporary address, Juliet 12

The other two Js didn’t want to do this. In addition to the cost of mooring lines, keeping the boat in the water would not be good for the hull. I realized that I would have to do some major boat washes on a weekly basis. I have the free time to do this; not so for most other people.

The bottom after about one week

The White crane in action

Room was found to return the boats to the drysail area. I was very happy to be back to the White Crane; no more blue!