Get the Haul Out!

It's time to haul out and head back to Canada for a couple of months! Zimmerman’s Marina was recommended to us and could haul out catamarans, so it was time to head to Virginia. When we left Capital Yacht Club, the weather was looking good, around 14 knots of wind, but it was on the nose. Unfortunately, by 3 pm, the winds picked up to 25 knots on the nose. Adding that to the 3 knots of current against us made it very slow going. After 3-4 hours of rough riding on the Potomac River, we made it to Fairview Beach, and thankfully it was a very calm anchorage with some spooky fog in the morning.

The next three days we had no wind, but the river was calm, and we had a really fun interaction with some dolphins in our dinghy.

Zimmerman’s is more of a storage and work yard than a marina; their docks hold maybe 5 boats. The next day we maneuvered onto the dock. This is a very shallow entrance and cannot be done at low tide. We made it safe and sound and hooked up to power for the night as we waited to get hauled out.

Now the last time we were hauled out we ended up with damage to our keel as they almost dropped our boat so we were very nervous about getting hauled out. Zimmerman's uses a trailer haul out vs a crane with straps and we have never done this type of lift before so that only increased our nerves. It was crazy to watch!

How are your backup skills??

Once out we needed to prepare the boat to be left for two months while we traveled around Eastern Canada. This may be a good time for me to explain why we are leaving Momentum 42 and heading to Canada. As Canadians, we can only spend around 6 months in the US, but they subtract days from the previous two years. That meant we could not stay in the US until November when we planned to sail to the Caribbean with the Salty Dawgs. So why did we not just sail to Canada? This one is quite easy. Even though our boat is registered as a Canadian vessel we do not pay import taxes until we bring the boat back to Canada. If the boat never goes to Canada we never need to pay the import taxes. The taxes we would need to pay are around 30% of the purchase price, so Momentum 42 will never touch Canadian waters instead we spent the next week cleaning and prepping the boat for storage.

We picked up our rental car and purchased some camping gear and we were ready to go! We planned to drive up to my folks' new house in New Brunswick, which is only an hour and a half from the border to Maine. Our old F150 pick-up is at their home waiting for them to move there. We were going to make their home our base for trips that we had planned. Nikki and I are touring parts of New Brunswick and getting some kiting or winging in. Bob and Sharon are joining us for a couple of weeks to travel around Nova Scotia. Lastly, we will hook up with my brother Brad and Andrea to travel in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. So many places to go and people to see it all starts with a drive from Virginia to New Brunswick. 

We left Zimmerman's on Saturday, August 12, and arrived at my folks home in Cambridge-Narrows (C-N) on Monday, August 14th. It was a quick drive and we did some longer days as we wanted to be in Canada and settled before Nikki’s birthday on the 19th. This would give us a day to unpack the rental and then drive to Bangor Maine to return it and back to C-N in our old truck. It was a busy 5 days traveling through 9 states and one province with three border crossings, and yes I was searched when I crossed into the US.

Finally, we settled in and kicked back, relaxing at my folks' new home. Their house is amazing. It is right on Washademoak Lake, with views from every room plus as an added bonus a hot tub. My folks had StarLink shipped there so we set that up and they also had a king bed shipped over for us to set up in the guest room, which was great. Now it is around the 16th of August and Nikki’s birthday is coming fast so we needed to decide where to go and what to do for her big day. 

We will let you know all about it in the next blog along with our travels through New Brunswick.