The trucker told me the boat would get to Larsen’s Thursday afternoon or Friday morning. So Thursday morning I had the car at the dealer getting checked out after it sat around outside during the Chicago winter. Pat had been driving it every 2-3 weeks, as I instructed, but it turned out that wasn’t enough, as I’ll explain in a bit. One thing I realized after I checked the car in, was that I didn’t have my wallet. I had left home without it - I need to reacquire some shore habits. While at the dealer, I found out the boat was arriving in Waukegan in an hour and a half, and it takes an hour to get up there. Pat to the rescue. On her way to work, she grabbed my wallet and delivered it to me at the dealer. After I had my wallet, the dealer could give me a loaner car - a brand new RAV4 with only 70 miles on it, which I more than doubled that day. I needed a loaner car because the brakes on my car were seized up, especially the back brakes, which would destroy the rotors if I drove it too far - like to Waukegan to meet the boat.

When I got off the highway at the Waukegan exit, I found 120 was under destruction and had a width limit. This did not look like a good way to try to bring the boat. Happily, the truck driver had checked things out with Larsen, and they had him come in using an alternate route.

So now it is time to put the boat and mast back together, get the rudder and keel fixed, replace used anodes, wash and wax the hull, and finally, apply some bottom paint. There are hundreds of barnacles on the bottom, rudder, prop, shaft, etc., which must be removed. I noticed that the paint on the port topsides stripe just above the waterline, is seriously bubbled. With the boat loaded down, that paint was often sitting in the water, or was almost in the water. I’m not sure what happened there. The hull was repaired for blisters, but only up to the waterline. So maybe the blisters are in the hull, not the paint. The rebuilt part of the hull below the waterline is perfect, making me think it was a good idea to do that repair before the trip. I was worried that without the repair, the bottom part in the water would come back looking like the paint stripe does now - with a thousand small bubbles.