Thursday, June 3, 2010

5/26/10 - Little River, South Carolina


New props, new zincs, straight shaft - we are ready to go.


And then it went crunch.

Since “Reflection” was scheduled to be launched around high tide late in the day after all her repairs, and Pat discovered that our hotel had a laundry room, she took advantage of their facilities to do our wash while waiting for George to come back from the marina after doing his “finishing touches” on our vessel. We asked for a late check-out, and they were glad to accommodate us, but we still had to wait around in their lounge area until the marina’s crew was ready. Rod also came back to get his check and to see how everything was going, and then we all went back to the marina for the launch.


“Reflection” has her own wood blocks which hang over the sides to protect her exhausts from getting squeezed by a travel-lift’s straps when she is lifted. The starboard block was put in place, however, the yard staff wanted to use their block on the port side. Just as the slings were tightened and she was getting pulled up, we heard a loud “CRACK”, and one of the staff started yelling! When we ran over to see what had happened, we saw that the block on the port side had rolled, and the fiberglass exhaust on that side had been crushed. This was not supposed to happen!

The marina staff was extremely embarrassed and apologetic, and within minutes they began to make repairs. However, this job would definitely take a lot of time, and it was already near 5 p.m. Then it began to rain! We knew that we would definitely have to spend another night at the Hampton Inn, not to mention being delayed another day by this additional repair. So we got our bags, which we had not even unpacked, and went back to the hotel to lick our wounds with cocktails and Domino’s pizza in the same room we’ve had for the past two nights.

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