Apr 23 2007
On The Hard
Gotta tell ya, folks, nothing, but nothing, sucks as bad as being a boat on the hard.
I mean, boats, they’re magic. They are creatures of the water. And just like all other water creatures, they’re sort of weird and awkward and in danger of suffocating when forced to be on land for any length of time.
So it was in this sorry condition that we found our boat, “Vuela” (until we can rename her, but that’s another post) when we came to Puerto Rico, to claim her. The hard at Puerto del Rey Marina is a place under constant construction; it’s a facility with ambition, and they’re doing what they can to accommodate some very wealthy and exacting customers. The area where Vuela was stored was a big empty field just months prior, and now, was a gravel-paved, dust-choked desert, with little metal tie-downs sprouting out of the dirt like daisies. For hurricane season. Whatever. What it meant to us was that the morning serenade, and the sundowner, were both served over a backdrop of heavy machinery and clouds of tropical volcanic dust.
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Vuela had been there long enough that the weeds had grown up, so you can sort of see what the whole field used to be like. You can also see the maniacally-flat and perfect road out in front of her. There’s a matching one in back, where I’m standing to take the picture. And to the front right corner of the photo, you can see part of the pile of garbage bags. We removed 25 bags of garbage, and 6 bags of stuff someone could use, as part of the cleanup process. As I told Marc on the plane ride there, I wasn’t sure whether I was more terrified of what would be left, or what might not. As it turns out, I had to buy more trash bags. And the boat probably gained an inch or two at the waterline, once she finally went in. |
| We weren’t actually supposed to be spending much time there at all. The rigger was supposed to have been completely finished by the time we arrived in Puerto Rico, and we were supposed to arrange splash and sea trials for the next day. Alas, the rollerfurling mechanism had some fatal disaster or other, and the repairs, when all was said and done, did not reach completion until the day after we’d left. But that’s in another post. |  |
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This shot of Jason and Marc supervising just cracked me up. Brothers, much? |
I didn’t take much in the way of pictures for the three days we were on the hard. Too miserable. Too hot. Too depressed. Too dusty. Too busy ferrying people back and forth to the nearest bathroom, which was a 7 minute walk or a 2 minute drive away. Too busy trying to clean out a boat, while not freaking out about kids falling off. Too busy trying to act as if I’m not the least bit worried about the boat just falling over. Trying not to snarl about the damn rigging. Trying to realize that life on the hard is one of the many joys of boat ownership.
Congratulations on getting your cat! What is it? It looks like one of the South African designs… I know the challenges of being on the hard well, as that’s where my cat has spent most of it’s time since I bought it in 2002. The saving grace is that it’s in La Paz, Mexico, which is a pretty nice place to be, when I’m not back in the northwest working.
Cheers!