C-Dream, from idea to reality (Pt. 1)

With the lyric of an old song: “ A dream never dies, but the dreamer…” in my head I went to work. First to visualize the few easy steps it should take to move a small wooden boat, it was to take but a mere few days.  Too easy, as one never fully considers all the unforeseen, mishaps and errors one is sure to encounter.

The start was promising, once set up to do the actual work, I moved the mind boggling weight of well over a tone down a ramp for some 36’’. Furthermore I managed to keep her upright descending off it’s 4’ high platform in the center of my ramp. Yet this early success was not to last. Only a short distance later I veered to the portside and so was forced to spend a day straighten out my first mistake off many.

The question arises how did I move the boat at all… after I’d ripped every available boulder that could serve me as anchorage out of it’s sea-bed, I found myself left over with only sand & broken shell & no anchor big enough to hold. So recalling bits & pieces of lessons in physic, I build a very temporary brace in front of the ramp to pull the sloop towards with the come-along. So temporary was this brace, that it had to be changed; due to forever loosing the right point for all the pressure I was putting upon this contraption (after every couple of feet I got closer too), or more then half the time it fell or busted apart  on it’s own account.

The original owner of the boat had pulled it out of the water. To his advantage he had several trees close enough to the beach to use with the help of winches to make the pulling towards shore incomparable to pulling it back out to sea. He also had a place to go too after the day was done. Poor me had to spend weeks on a small sloop that wasn’t even afloat… not that I’m complaining… it was ,due to it’s airtight stove, warm and all that was missing was the ocean swell to give the illusion of an extended sea voyage.

Still,every day I pushed on and on, dreaming and working my way to the ultimate goal… get  this craft afloat & sailing again. By now it had become quite clear there was way more involved than I had imagined and it would take longer than just a few days. My good attitude and spirit had not yet diminished, that was to come a few weeks later when I asked myself more detailed what, why & how.

Thank God, the first time I did hit on a low of the roller-coaster trip I’d embarked on and which became more intense as time went by, …friends stopped by and gave moral support.

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