With apologies to Willie Nelson, Angels Wings is on the hard again...

After several abortive and frustrating attempts to get hauled at our local marina, we eventually decided to move Wings to Jennings Boatyard down near the Bay, a boatyard where the skipper had a liveaboard ketch hauled several times nearly twenty years before. Still under the same family ownership, Jennings doesn't purport to be a marina, but rather a boatyard. Although there are the usual slips available monthly or annually, the stock and trade remains boat-building and refurbishment - no restaurant, no night-club, no tiki-bar; just several large sheds for building or major refurbishing, one public restroom, several acres of haul out space for the dozens of boats on the hard, and the ever-present expertise of Larry Jennings -- should an owner need to order supplies, contract for complex repairs, or just need some friendly advice on a pet project.

We were please to see that two years in the water had not encouraged the stubborn marine growth we'd had to contend with last time. Wings' hull still seemed in reassuringly good shape and the power-wash got most of the growth off, so the bottom paint had done its duty. We quickly stripped most of the equipment out of Wings' cabin because we expect her to be out of the water for 12-18 months as we leisurely piddle through several projects, both to rigging and hull, and also make a few changes in the cabin as well as some repairs where the deck has gotten spongy. Already it feels better just having Wings at this tranquil, rural crossroads of transoceanic cruisers, working watermen and dreaming weekenders like ourselves -- the beguiling aroma of epoxy, sawdust and salt air invites us.