We found a home for the boat

Our boats new home for the next year

Being fairly late in the season and not knowing much about the Chesapeake Bay Area (turns out its about the size of Lake Erie but probably a bit bigger shorline wise due to all the various rivers and fingers in the area) we pretty much took the first marina that sounded good not paying much attention to location or details.

When we called the owner had told us he had just put in new docks designed for big catamarans and was planning to start focusing his business on catamarans. Turns out we were his fifth one. Three were on the hard for the remainder of the season while the owners went home and one was for sale as the owners wife was done with it. There was one other in the water but the owners were not around. The docks were nice. He was still working on getting power out to the docks and lighting was coming soon as well. Soon in this case might be November(note we came in towards the end of June). It did not appear to be the busiest place but one could see it had been an active but smaller boat yard at one time. The marina was in a quiet and seemingly well protected area from wind/storms towards the end of a creek.

The owner a fellow probably in his late 70's was on the dock to greet us and help with lines as we came in. He provided suggestions for timing up and offered to give us a tour of town and ensure we got a rental car.. neither of which we had been planning for. Our first stop was his main office in Oxford at a different marina he owned. When we first talked to him he suggested we stay at that marina but after finding it on google maps it appeared that he only had one dock at would fit our boat while allowing his other dock holders to actually get out of their docks and it sounded like maybe he already had some transient boats planning to come in during the month of July. So we opted for his working boat yard with the new docks. One of the downsides as we would find out later was that the yard in Trappe did not really have working bathrooms/showers for dock holders. They are in the process of being remodeled. If I had to guess this may not happen anytime soon? Anyway the Oxford location did have showers which we promptly took advantage of. While waiting for my turn at a shower I had a chance to get to know our new friend. Turns out he bought the marina we were staying in to build boats back in the 80's and he did so until the last recession when the boat market crashed and it was not viable to create them anymore. He had also been a Grand Banks dealer and service center at one point before they went bankrupt. He was still actively servicing a number of his customers but as those boats got older and changed hands that business was shrinking so he recently decided to pivot his business into one focused on catamarans. His goal was to establish a service center first then become a dealer for a brand of power cats I had not heard of. The display model he had looked nice. He's an engineer at heart with an entrepreneur's spirt that loves sailing and overall a very sharp and interesting fellow.

Once we were all showered he drove us down through his home town of Oxford (think a one stop light town) which is quite cute. It has a restaurant or two, a yacht club, bowling ally, his marina, and a hotel. From there he took us to the next town over in hopes of getting us a rental car so we might get to an airport to fly home. This process took us about 3hrs as the first location did not have any cars available and of course we did not know we were even doing this so had not made reservations ahead of time. Eventually we were successful at getting a car at a very small regional airport, found some lunch, and headed back to the yard.

Once back at the yard we signed a contract and paid to keep our boat at his facility until November with plans to store the boat there for winter. Turns out he just purchased a travel lift that can pull out boats up to 33ft wide. Seems this is a unique thing in the bay area so it appears he may keep our business for more than just the one season. Being a true entrepreneur he tried to drum up some service work from us but I felt I could manage the current list of items and had a fair amount done a couple weeks ago while at Xquisite. The only thing left on my list was the generator which he could not tackle but knew someone that could so it seems I have a good contact to start with. 

Now that all the business was settled, we were feed, we had a loose exit plan, we could all feel the exhaustion settling in so back to the air conditioned boat we went for naps. 

By this point we had worked our available timeline to within one day. It was time to find some flights home as I was due back to take our Scout Troop to West Virginia in two days. While Max and I rinsed the boat down Amy found some flights home and we were off to celebrate our first two successful overnight trips on a new boat with some ice cream. The next day we packed up, put stuff away, and headed out. Time will tell if we picked a good spot or not.