The day we have been anticipating since mid-June has finally arrived. The Chipolbrok Moon has reached Victoria BC.
But let’s back up. When we purchased our 66′ Tollycraft in Ft Lauderdale, the original plan was to bring her on her bottom through the canal and ship her from Golfito Costa Rica with Seven Star Yacht Transport. Historically the wind lays flat April and May, but we experienced strong NE winds, unpredictable thunderstorms, and ten foot seas almost daily.
Since the weather always gets a vote, we decided to ship her out of Ft Lauderdale. We also changed yacht transport companies, to United Yacht Transport. We had a couple Yacht Club members use UYT, they are based in Ft Lauderdale instead of West Palm, and they were cheaper.
Things we’ve learned about yacht transporting. The quote. They may give you a firm price, but there is wiggle room.
The window of the ships load time is thirty days. High demand for yacht transport means the ship leaves early in the window. Low demand, not a full ship, means you may be waiting more than a month for the ship to leave. We are pretty certain they combined the May and June ships. As our May departure was June 21st.
Use MarineTraffic to track the ship. We watched the live webcams as the ship came through the canal, very cool to spot your boat.
Unloading. It’s a process. We unloaded in Victoria BC. They give you a time to catch the shuttle tender (c-tow) at Fisherman’s Wharf to Odgen Point, where they have your boat waiting for you alongside the ship. There is a bow and stern unloading about every hour. We heard they aren’t supposed to lift your boat until you are present, but they were three hours behind schedule.
How/why were they so far behind? You do your best to prepare your boat for no power for four to five weeks pre-departure in Port of Everglades. Pickle the water maker, turn off all breakers, turn off the battery switches. And you pray for the best.
A 64′ Grand Alaskan engines wouldn’t start – the batteries had drained during transport. She had to be towed in by c-tow, and if you’re paying attention was also our shuttle tender, into Victoria to a marina. Hence, a three hour delay for stern unloading.
There’s now a party at platform 9 3/4, with the next two time slots behind us, forward and stern, waiting.
c-tow finally arrives to pick us up. We could not be more excited. The shuttle process is quick and banal, well besides the brisk S wind blowing. We are not in the Caribbean anymore.
The engines fired right up, Tom quickly turned on the battery switches, turned on the necessary breakers and electronics. Everything seemed to be running fine, except the Simrad screens appeared to be in night mode, but they were not. Hm… couldn’t figure it out, so we told them we are good to go and let us free.
The dim Simrad screens was the first red flag. We missed it. The second red flag was our starboard engine stalled right as we were pulling away from the ship. We motored in on our Port engine to the inner harbour, our destination Ship Point Marina.
Right as the Coho (blackball ferry that runs from Port Angeles to Victoria) is about to depart and we are attempting to dock, our micro-commanders fail. We are stuck in Port engine reverse.
We quickly call Victoria Harbour Patrol over to alert her to our situation, and asked if she can give us a push towards Ship Point. She is not allowed to assist or tow vessels. We also quickly alerted the Coho of our situation (the captain was NOT a happy camper, and only waited three minutes before he worked his way around us) and Victoria Coast Guard.
After doing a perfect circle with floatplanes dodging us, we shut the Port engine down and were able to start the Port engine again with the micro-commander working. Tom was able to safely dock Docktails. This could have ended much much worse.
So what caused our Simrad screen dimness, the starboard engine, and the micro-commanders to fail? Low batteries. We were at 8V.
Even though we turned off all battery switches pre-loading, somewhere we have a direct connection that drained our (brand new) batteries during transport.
By the next morning we were back up to 13.6V.
Moral of the story? Start your generator before untying from the ship. As both of our generators were kaput, this was not an option for us.
Unlike our yacht club members, we did not have the best experience with UYT. But it’s always tough to deal with unhappy customers. Would we use UYT again? Maybe. Would we consider Seven Star? Definitely. All of our talks leading up to our switch had been great customer service, so we’d probably give them a second, or first, chance.