Yes it's always fun to think about a new boat and all the new adventures it can take you on. But we still have our 42 Nordic Tug that is scheduled to go in the water May 1. A couple weeks ago I brought all the cushins home to clean them as they have not been well cleaned since we bought the boat. I had grand plans that if I moved the boat to a marina closer to our house I would visit it more and work on several projects over the winter. Heck it was even in a heated storage unit which would allow me to do some much needed bottom paint and calking that needed to be completed. Unfortunately almost none of those plans came to fruition. I did get some new bolts put in the braces that hold up the swim platform and did get the hoist working again which should allow us to launch the dinghy. Last year we launched and played with the dinghy while at Toledo Yacht Club, lifted it up on to the boat and the hoist quit. We were able to loosen the four point straps we use to attach the hoist to the dinghy, to then lower it into the chalks but I had been stumped on what caused it and choose to ignore it for the remainder of the season. Anyway it seems other than those two minor fixes I managed to ignore all the cleaning and other more minor projects on the list including bottom paint. Well it was now down to the wire. The boat is supposed to go in the water tomorrow and one can't very well bottom paint it in the water.
I got to the boat and spent almost 12hrs sanding and painting without a break just to get the job done prior to splashing the boat the next day. Two years ago when I bottom painted I had decided to try an environmentally friendly paint that was really expensive. It worked really well the first season and not so great the second. However coverage only took one gallon and we were putting it on pretty thin by the end. This year I purchased the West Marine branded stuff thinking two gallons should get me two coats. Nope seems it's a lot thicker and the two gallons barely got one coat. Ugh! Lesson learned next time I'm doing this job over three days instead of one. By the time I got home I could barely lift my arms and I was never so happy to have a chiropractor appointment scheduled for the next day. Oh well, I"m sure what I got on will last the season and with some light sanding next year I can get the two coats on pretty quickly or maybe better yet it will be the next owners job? As I'm writing this I'm remembering the new boat needs a bottom paint job and its twice as wide as this one and in another state.. Ugh :(
Watching them launch the Tug is a pretty neat process. I'm always amazed how tightly they can squeeze these big boats together in the storage barns. The pictures here sort of give you the idea but I can't walk between two boats in there without turning sideways. Anyway they show up with a little car similar or maybe the same as what they haul luggage to the planes with at the airport. Attach to it is a hydraulic trailer they can raise and lower at least four feet while controlling the front and rear heights independently. They slide the trailer under the boat. Raise up the pads, remove the blocks the boat is resting on in the barn, then just drive it out. The little blue car for lack of a better term moved our 40,000lb boat around with no problems. Of course the trailer tires did look like they were under quite a lot of pressure but everything else looked easy.
Once they had the boat out of the barn they hauled it the 1/4 of a mile to the travel lift where it was backed in and the lifting straps were put in place to do their work of holding the boat while they lowered the hydraulic's on the trailer and pulled it out from under the boat. Once that was taken care the lift driver drove it into the well lowered the boat until it was floating. I checked all the bilges to ensure water was not gushing into anything and that my bow thruster still worked. Everything checked out, I started it and enjoyed the 2 mile trip to our dock. Luckily all of this happened about the same time Max got out of school so he could meet me at the dock to catch lines helping to get the boat tied up.
Now the real work begins. We need to get everything cleaned up, depersonalized, decluttered, and polished so we can start looking for its next care taker. It's been a great boat for us. Was a great boat for doing the loop in and I'm sure would be great for the trip we would like to do to Alaska one day but for now we need a boat that will circumnavigate and unfortunately our little tug is a bit small and limited on fuel capacity for that trip. I'm sure we will miss it. When we came back from the loop we had grand visions of checking out some of the Canadian canals, visiting the Thousand Islands area, spending time in the North Channel, doing the Down East Loop, and visiting Lake Superior. Unfortunately life and kids activities got in the way of all of that. Now that I'm over 50 I've really been thinking about my bucket list and I'm afraid of getting too old or simply loosing the desire for a few of the items like a circumnavigation. So I figure while I'm still healthy I should knock some of the big items off my list and can come back to the smaller ones when we are older. I wouldn't be surprised if we come back to another tug one day in the future. Its build quality, fuel efficiency, and overall design really do make it one of the best boats I've seen for cruising.
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