By early Saturday afternoon, I was finally ready to trailer C.A. up to the boat lot. The process of hooking her up to the ole Honda for travel was rather uneventful, but it sure felt pretty nerve-wracking at first to be lugging a boat behind me. I'm not sure if I'll ever feel completely comfortable with trailering a boat, but I absolutely prefer driving forward rather than backward with a boat behind me. (sigh...) After the first few miles, though, I was feeling confident enough to gab on the phone with my friend Kelly (Admiral of Catalina-25 Adventurous.) The drive itself was blessedly uneventful, and I arrived at my boat-parking spot with trailer bearings that were only slightly warm. (My first attempt at greasing the trailer bearings was apparently a success! Delightful!)
I enjoyed every moment of setting up the boat - well, perhaps there was one exception, which we'll get to in a moment. I definitely tried to work slowly/methodically in rigging the boat, because there is a lot to do and a lot to remember. So many pieces and parts and fasteners and blankety-blank split rings! It would have been a bad thing to get the mast raised only to discover that I had forgotten to place the windex wind indicator at the top of the mast! Thanks for pointing that out, Ben! (Ben = Cap'n and Chief Executive Motor Installer of Catalina-25 Adventurous.)
So, this year's launch day bug encounter was not nearly as dramatic as last year's encounter. Last year, I had the great displeasure of encountering a giant spider that seemed to have the ability to float and bounce around in mid-air -directly toward me, of course - until I introduced it to my shoe. This year, while preparing to bolt the mast in place, I noticed a puffy white 'thing', about the size of a quarter, near the place where the mast is affixed. I didn't think much of it... until I noticed the eight little legs moving around inside the... SPIDER EGG SACK! I once again made the proper introductions. What is it about boats and spiders?!
I wish I had been able to launch C.A. sooner than mid-June, but I had many boat chores to do -
- check and tighten trailer bolts
- grease trailer bearings and preferably install Bearing Buddies
- install windex wind indicator on mast
- replace jib sheets and mainsheet with new line
- replace main halyard line that some neighborhood morons decided to catch on fire over the winter
- sand and oil teak wood - not yet done
- rig up a tiller tamer, so that I can learn to singlehand the boat this summer! - not yet done (but looking forward to drilling more holes in the boat - yay!)
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