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Hull #109 was ordered in late November of 2001 and was scheduled to be delivered end of February or mid March of 2002 On February 11th, word came out that the boat would be arriving in Los Angeles on March 22nd for dealer commissioning. The dealer and I agreed to drive down by car to take along any tools and other provisioning necessary to get the boat ready for the trip to Mexico. This time is also intended to get to know the boat and its machinery. The plan is to continue along the western coast of Central America during the summertime and enjoy warmer pastures and see where the wind will carry us. So on March 21st, we packed all, people and tools, into the truck and went down to L.A. to be present when the boat will be unloaded early in the morning. After a sleepless night, full of anticipation, we got up to find some breakfast for the short trip to San Pedro Harbor where the container ship had arrived with #109. At first, security at the harbor entrance had quite some problem allowing us to pass with starter batteries, tools, box cutters, cameras and 24 gallons of gasoline, understandable after Sep 11th. Well, we weren't clean shaven either and probably looked rather dangerous :) But things worked out since Gary had sweet talked to the folks down there and we proceeded with our load to the dock. The boat had already been unloaded from the container ship and rested on it's shipping cradle along the pier ready to be unwrapped. Yes, indeed, the boat was shrink wrapped. This is one time the forward boarding ladder comes in real handy, as the whole cradle is rather tall. Snip, snip cut a hole into the wrapping, board the boat, get some room to reach the engines and get started to make sure the engines would run. Meanwhile, I was fighting large amounts of some rather thick, wet, and salty/dirty shrink wrap to reveal a brand new Seawind 1000. After roughly about an hour or so, we were ready for the humongous crane to pick up the boat and and lower it to the side of the pier for us to board. Strangely enough it was not save to stay on board during the pick up from land and we had to enter the boat again when it was above water, requiring us to jump aboard from the pier. We were lowered down between two container ships and expected to motor away. All the sudden one of the engines would not start and so we had to tucker along on one motor to Los Alamitos Bay for final assembly. During the two hour trip we examined the boat and tried to find all the parts required to make this a real sailboat. The mast and boom were still attached to the deck wrapped in real used carpets and padded with old tires. In all, this was not an event full trip but allowed me to experience operation with only one engine running. We arrived at Los Alamitos Bay and were joined by my wife and my 5 year old who could not hold his excitement to explore all nooks and crannies on the boat. |
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