The Beginning

My Aquarius 23 Sailboat

In her prime, she looked like that. Quite a beauty, sleek and fast, attuned to the wind.

I saw an ad on Craigslist, it read, 'Free Sailboat', no trailer, anchored off Port Hadlock, must move by (7 days). I call the guy in responding interested and get the story. It is his sons boat, who is working in Alaska. He no longed wants it, and the Department of Natural Resources has told him that it is illegal to have a boat anchored out there for so long and if it is not moved by said date, you will be fined $2000 for infraction.  I fear that there is never such a thing as a free sailboat.

The father took us out there on his motor boat and I looked her over as we approached. Her lines looked good from afar. Not to tub like, fairly racey. I was definitely interested. I saw an old outboard on her, left down in the water. No chance of starting that.

When I stepped aboard her, she was so sad. She was left anchored off of Skunk Island for at least a year and a half. Her mast had been blown off in the winter winds, and had ripped the mast base right out of the deck as it went over, leaving room for the rains to intrude into the deck core. At least the mast had been pulled up and lashed to the deck with the boom intact.

I have done a lot of deck replacements, not a big deal on a boat of this size. But the real challenge might be that the swing keel cable had broken, and left the 165 pounds of swinging steel dangling, making it very hard to get it on a trailer, which, I just happened to see one that fit the bill for $200 on Craigslist, only a hour away, and raced over to get it.

After towing her in, and beaching her, I scraped about a ton of barnacles off of her bottom before I could even get to the keel. I scraped as much of the muck off as I could, and moved her over to the trailer. The winch on the trailer was not sufficient to pull the boat up with the keel down, so out came the come-a-long to get that keel popped up.

With 30 minutes of winching, and nearly destroying my truck bed, she finally screeched onto the trailer with a huge hop right into place. The bumper hitch did an amazing job of pulling her out of the water, and getting her up that steep hill to get her home, five miles away, up a couple of even more steep hills. Of course, there was a huge belch of oil from the outboard, right as I pulled her out. I felt so bad, but there was nothing I could do.

The bumper, happy to say, survived the 2700 pound load up the hills. We got her parked in the drive in a nice level spot, and I went to track down some boat stands so as to get busy on the bottom to see how bad the damage was. I made some calls to Portland and borrowed my dad's pressure washer, and rented some boat stands to get her off the trailer.

The ghastly interior latex paint of pink and purple, which was prominently peeling off of every part the what used to be the smooth surfaces of the inside did not daunt me in the least. Full boat overhaul, that was the method, and this is the madness of my tale........

more to come......