Haul Up, Survey and Sea Trial Repair
Whew! Well, there are been a lot of firsts in the adventure, and that weekend was one of them. On the weekend of March 3rd and 4th we went back to La Paz, where Free Run is moored. We needed to be present for her survey and sea trial before completing the final sale.
For all you non-sailor types out there, a survey is a complete mechanical and electrical inspection of the boat by a qualified professional. Just as you wouldn’t buy a house without an inspection, buying a boat without a survey is asking for trouble… expensive trouble.
Ryan arrived in La Paz late Friday night. Don, the current owner of Free Run, was kind enough to pick him up and take him to the boat. They talked well into the night about the boat systems and all work Don had done on her. The haul-out was scheduled for 9am on Saturday. When I arrived at 11pm on Saturday night, Ryan has just got back from the surveyors house where he was acting as secretary; typing the survey as it was dictated to him.
As I mentioned, a survey is done by a qualified professional. In our case “qualified professional” was the understatement of the year. We hired Cecil Lange to survey Free Run. Cecil, a Kiwi, has designed boats, built boats, sailed boats, pretty much lived boats for most of his 82 years… that’s right, 82 years! And at 82 he was still climbing all over Free Run, crawling around the bilges, and cracking jokes at everyone’s expense. It was great! That being said, we were 100% confident that he would turn up anything that was wrong with the boat.
As soon as Free Run was hauled out of the water Cecil immediately went to work tapping the hull with his hammer. This is done to detect any areas where water has entered the fiberglass of the hull. Water leads to blisters in the fiberglass, and eventually soft, weak areas. With sailboats, water = bad. He spotted two areas of concern. On the center line of the hull near the bow of the boat there was a small crack in the hard surface covering the fiber glass. Cecil wasn’t too concerned, but thought it needed to be fixed none the less. The fiberglass on the rudder also showed some signs of stressing and cracks where the main rudder post joined the rudder. This was more of a concern for us. It is not unheard of for a sailboat rudder to break in the exact place where Free Run’s showed fatigue. With the boat out of the water, and the yard with some available labor, we made the call to do the repairs then and there rather than put-off the work until we got back. This would save us quite a bit of time and money later on, but meant we wouldn’t get to do the sea trial that weekend.
After going over the hull, Cecil went ‘top-side’ to inspect the rigging, deck fittings, engine, bilges and electrics. To be honest, I think the details would be boring to anyone but a sailor. What matters is the end result: all systems were go and given a great report! So after a 13 hour day we enjoyed a great dinner and cervesa to celebrate. But the work certainly wasn’t done yet. We knew that a number of things on the boat still needed attention. We wanted to look at all those items a closely as possible before heading back to Vancouver, so we could start amassing parts and materials to work on the boat.
The next two days was spent inspecting and measuring sails, measuring the cabin and locker space, sizing water tanks, and taking inventory of all the gear and parts on the boat. Each hour the “To-Do” and “To-Buy” lists grew, and the stock of Tecate shrank. By Monday night we had a pretty good idea of the tasks that await us when we return in May, and the boat started to feel a lot more like our own.
Signing the paperwork and the final payment was all that was left. So on Tuesday morning Gerry, a friend of Don’s, drove into Cabo San Lucas to make the payment and have the US Consulate notarize the Bill of Sale. We finished the deal with a hand-shake and celebratory drinks in Cabo. It was then straight to the airport to catch our flight home.