We're off to Germany....maybe

Well except there was the problem with the boat. We didn't want to keep paying to store it where it was, so Ron's parents offered to let us store it at their place, along with MACK - the Expedition that we use to move it around. So the Sheptocks and the Taylors went over to the marina to try to get the boat ready for transport to Alabama. The marina had already shrink wrapped it for us; my dad, brother and I had gone over earlier in the months to get it ready and we had the lights almost working - my dad found a better way to wire it - all I had to do was buy some wire, hook up the lights, grease the bearings and go. That's all. Hmmm.



Here's a little side note. There are two scourges of sailing (as far as the Taylors are concerned) - the trailer lights and the motor - neither of which have much to do with sailing. Each time we transport the boat, the lights have to be redone. And every season we go through hassles with the motor, and we usually find out on the water...



But I digress...



Bill and I ended up having to replace all of the trailer lights and all of the wiring and then rewiring the ground wire the new way. Finally it all worked. Boat got home and is parked in the neighbor's driveway:

Then we took off for Alabama in record heat - Jackie's car showed the outside temp to be 105 degrees at one point! Mack has over 200,000 miles on him and the boat weighs about 6000 lbs. Combine all those factors together and you get a car that gets only 60 miles to a quarter tank and was slowing significantly on the uphills. When we pulled into yet another rest stop, Jackie said "There is smoke coming out from under your hood". We weren't even half-way there yet. We called UHaul to see if they could rent us a truck to tow the boat with, but there were not trucks available from them, Ryder or Penske (busy moving week, I guess). The temp gauge was fine, so we let the car cool off abit and then took off again. But after the next stop we decided to cool off and got a hotel room with a pool.

Next morning I found a mechanic who could look at it. It only had 250 more miles to go before it was going to be stored for a year. I just wanted to see if there was a safety problem running. The mechanic hooked up his computer and found out that the problem was in the transmission and that if I allowed it to slow on the uphills then I wouldn't put too much strain on the transmission, and that is how we proceeded to Alabama. Here is a picture of our rig at Ron's parent's house safe and sound:

Since we lost a day, we hit the road back home after only about 2 or 3 hours of visisting. During the trip we was able to see my sister, my brother, my neice and my mom and dad before our trip. In spite of the 20+ hours of driving and the very short visit, the boat is now safe and that worry is off our plate.