Yesterday I got drafted to help move a friend's boat to another marina.
The boat's engines don't work, and for the past few days the subject of how to move/tow/drag the 40-foot houseboat out of its slip, through the congested marina, down the channel and into its new slip between other vessels ... without playing nautical pinball machine and causing catastrophic damage to every boat between here and there ... became an intense subject of discussion, speculation and fretting.
Opinions varied: one estimate concluded no fewer than seven people ... to fend off, steer and handle lines ... would be required aboard
plus two tow vessels (my own ill-advised suggestion was to contract a helicopter to pick up and relocate the boat). Bear in mind that the boat is 40 feet long and the space between adjacent vessels is 50 feet, leaving just 10 feet of wiggle room between success and lawsuit.
In the end, the boat's owner hired a professional tugboat captain to do the job ... and he showed up in an open top single engine runabout. He arrived at the appointed time, tied two lines to the houseboat, turned his boat around and began backing the houseboat out of the slip. Huh? What about waiting for the other five volunteers to show up and lend a hand?
Never mind that there were just two-
not seven, of us aboard ... he didn't care. Oh, did I mention that the wind was gusting the 10-foot tall houseboat sideways at 25 mph ... with a strong current flowing perpendicular to the marina?
No problem. Twenty minutes later the houseboat was safely tied in her new slip ... without a scratch ... and by then eight of us (including wide-eyed onlookers) stood on the dock dumbfounded, shaking our heads at what we'd just seen. We'd witnessed the impossible happen right before our eyes.
We'd seen one guy use a boat barely bigger than a bathtub move a two-story houseboat through a crowded marina, across open water in a 25 mph wind and then back the houseboat into a slip just 15 feet wide. Beside a $600,000 trawler.
No problem. No drama. No yelling, no screaming, no second-guessing, no blame, no excuses and no fault-finding.
Tugboat captains? Those guys are
good.
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Funny how the captain didn't show up and start doing the job by asking everybody for their input, suggestions, advice and for their opinions. Neither did he say, "The first thing we need to do is form a steering committee."
My friend's boat would still be tied in its slip if he had.
