Real simple plan. Bulletproof actually. We would leave San Pedro in the middle of the night, motor around the point and make a beeline for Oxnard arriving shortly after dawn.There we would haul out, strip the bottom, paint and replace the prop shaft. Then we would take our time cruising back, hitting all the northern Channel Islands off Ventura County before making our way back home to spend our twenty-fifth anniversary anchored off Catalina. Take a close look at the picture below. The date it was taken was July 20th, 1999, our twenty-fifth anniversary. The first part actually happened as planned. We did motor up in the middle of the night, arrive at dawn, haul out, strip and paint the bottom. A funny thing happened on the way to the new prop shaft though. It arrived on the twenty-first. We arrived at the yard on the fourteenth. So what happened in the meantime? Even though I had been in constant contact with the yard for a month nailing down details, making sure their machinist would be there, making sure they had nine feet of Nitronic 50 shafting in inch and three-eighths, their machinist decided to go on vacation on the fourteenth and the yard decided to tell us after we were out of the water.
Slipping Away Blog 