The MEA-C

I started looking for a real boat. Something that I could afford and probably needed fixed up. I wanted something cheap and close. I couldn’t afford to drive a long way or spend much money. The Craigslist add was a little vague and I can’t remember the exact wording, but the gist was “Westerly Centaur, sitting on the ground, needs some work in Boulder, CO” and a phone number. I thought, “Wow, this is the kind of boat I’d like to sail in the ocean. I wonder what the deal is?” I called the number and talked to a nice elderly lady who reminded me of my own grandmother. She insisted that I look at it before I decided if I wanted it. They weren’t asking for money. They just wanted to have it moved. I agreed to drive down and look at it two days later. Marjorie and I talked it over and decided it would be a good idea to at least look. I drove down and met with the owners. We sat and I talked with Richard, a quiet gentleman who was originally from England but had worked in the U.S. most of his adult life. We talked about boats and his boat and the dreams he had for it.

Then, we came to the hard part. He had inoperable cancer and was considered terminal. He and his wife were looking to downsize their living arrangements so they could enjoy the time they had left, and she could have a more manageable place after he was gone. He had dreamed of fixing the boat up with his son and trailer-sailing it around the lakes of the Rocky Mountains. As life goes sometimes, time got away from him. He wanted someone to take it and repair it. He feared someone would just scrap her for the parts. The real problem was that they needed it out of their backyard so they could show the house. We went out to see her. She was parked in their backyard under a rickety looking gantry and she had definitely seen better days. The cockpit was filled with leaves and dried-up apples from the neighbor’s trees. When I opened the hatch, the inside smelled of oil and water and mold. It had flooded at least two feet above the floorboards. The engine appeared to be froze up and was in bad shape.

I got out and back on the ground. He showed me the mast and said the sails were stored in his garage. The whole thing broke my heart a bit.  I said I would take it but I needed a few days to get a crew together and some tools rounded up. We agreed on $1 as the price and they got the paperwork going while I went home and hatched a plan. I tried to rent a trailer big enough to haul a 26-foot boat on but there wasn’t one to be found. So, I spent some of my savings to buy one from a local place but it cost a lot more than I wanted it to. Then, I bought some 15-foot 6×6 timbers, some lifting slings and some manual chin hoists. Next, I called my best friend Mike, a local artist and ceramics teacher at the college, and asked him what he was doing for the coming weekend. “Nothing yet,” was his response. I explained to him what I was going to do and he jumped in. Then, I called a couple of other friends who thought I was nuts, but my friend Josh said he would do it too.  For a fourth, my son Owen volunteered. Well before the crack of dawn, we set off for Colorado with all the tools I could think of that we might need and two trucks so, if we had a problem, we would have backup. When we got to the owners’ house, Mike was stunned. In fact, he later admitted that he thought I was certifiable. But we still jumped in and got started. We turned out to be the neighborhood entertainment for the day. As we set up the new gantry and prepared to hoist the boat off the ground, our lovely hosts bought lunch and we had a picnic with our audience. Mike, Josh, Owen, and I worked like a machine together and after lunch break, we started hoisting her off the ground. Once she was airborne, I carefully backed the trailer under her and then we lowered her onto the trailer. Once we had her strapped down, we dismantled both the new and old gantries and loaded the whole works onto the trailer too. It was quite the sight, pulling the boat through Boulder back to I-25. We stopped in Loveland for dinner at the McDonalds where the header picture for the site was taken. From there, we had a six-hour drive from Boulder back to Casper. She’s heavy and not very aerodynamic. We got back to Casper at about 2300 hours and managed to park her in the storage yard I had rented for storing her. It was a really long day, but I think we were all so amped from our successful mission that it didn’t feel that long.

I think Mike took most of the pictures while we were doing this job.