When we sold our 42′ Performance Trawler last fall, we sold her without our tender. We purchased a 12ft AB ALX (aluminum bottom, instead of fiberglass) two years ago, and Tom tricked her out with a ten inch sub, amp, and a Fusion stereo. Needless to say, she rocked. 
Portia checking out our new tender. 
Tessa researched shipping options to transport our skiff from Bainbridge Island to Ft Lauderdale. She found uShip.com, which you can put out a request for transport and different companies bid. We went with the first guy who bid on our tender, which happened to be the lowest.
Fast forward to the week before our guy is supposed to pick up our skiff. UShip dropped him as a transporter, stating in an email that a previous customer reported slander. Our guy contacted us and told us his side of the story. Since we needed our skiff in Ft Lauderdale ASAP, and he had many many positive reviews on uShip, we decided to stick with him working outside of uShip.
March 5th he came with a 40ft trailer and with the aid of a boom truck from Sunshine Propane, we lifted our skiff off her trailer and onto the 40ft trailer. We kept the key, and the removable Garmin GPS/Navigation unit. We put our Seahawk folding chairs on the floor, and a nifty battery recharger under her seat. If you’ve been boating with us, you’ll know that her battery always seems to need a quick boost.
We shook hands, handed him a thousand bucks cash with the rest paid upon arrival, and that was that.
Fast forward to March 24th. Our skiff was supposed to be in Ft Lauderdale ten days prior. Our guy texted asking us what the WN registration numbers were on our skiff. Big red flag went up. Did we just pay a guy cash to steal our skiff?
The next day Tom spent seven hours talking to multiple police officers, sheriffs, dispatches, and towing companies in Jacksonville Florida and Georgia. His story was true, and it was a doozie.
At some point along the way the owner of the company split ways with the driver of his truck. The driver and the owner had a tiff, and the owner did not hear from him for six days.
March 22nd Tom gets the lengthy text of his story. His truck broke down outside of Jacksonville Florida, and his driver in his infinite wisdom decided to borrow a friend’s Dodge Dakota to finish the haul. A significantly smaller truck and inadequate for a 40 ft trailer. They got caught in torrential rain, the ball was too small for the trailer, it popped off, rolled over and slid across the the meridian to the other side of the highway.
Recognize that tender? Yes, this photo is oriented the correct way.
Tom’s bird dogging located our skiff in Jesup, Georgia. Population 10,214.
March 24th. We fly to Ft Lauderdale with Portia, this was her longest flight by far and she was a trooper!
Worst case scenario is our tender is not totaled. Since we are trying to cross the Gulf stream at the end of the week, we are under a time crunch and can’t wait two to three weeks to find out what the insurance company deems the damage of our tender and have it repaired.
March 25th just happened to be the last day of the Palm Beach Boat Show. Guess what we did, you are correct. Tender shopped!