Hauling Out in San Carlos

So, here I am: I got my blogging mojo back just in time to leave Internet connectivity again. Sailing is like that sometimes.

Anyway, the last thing that went according to plan, occurred waaay back in late March when GB dove on the hull in Bahia Concepcion over on the Baja Peninsula and advised me The Fox needed its hull repainted.  We'd gone almost 2 full years since GB had sanded and painted the hull in Seattle with the finest bottom paint available in the Pac NW. The paint was so well traveled by now, in these warmer southerly waters, that the barnacles and whatnot were attaching themselves with greater vigor than GB could exert to scrub them off. And so we left Bahia Concepcion and made a northern crossing of the Sea of Cortez to a popular cruisers' boat yard on the mainland, in San Carlos, Sonora.

San Carlos has its Marina Seca, where over 1000 boats haul out every year to be put on the hard during Sonora's long, hot summertime hurricane season; and it has a work yard where owners can do whatever maintenance, repairs and upgrades are necessary, with a view toward splashing again as quickly as possible. We fell into the latter group.

I've never liked hauling-out. It is unnatural for a boat to be out of the water. (I do not care that that's how a boat gets built in the first place - it just doesn't feel right) It is also unnatural for the likes o' me to live aboard a boat on jackstands: I'm not partial to scrambling up & down ladders, especially not while bound for the washroom carrying a bucket full of dirty dishes in one hand.  And even more especially, I do not like scrambling down said ladder at 2 in the morning, all bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed, bound for the washroom yet again when nature calls. Anyway.

Marina San Carlos has a launch ramp that Marina Seca also uses to haul boats. The launch ramp area and the main fairway are shallow - there's a portion of the main fairway where boats with 6-foot-or-deeper keels tend to run aground; and the launch ramp area itself is so shallow, that Marina Seca's haulout schedule is based on the right height of the tides coinciding with their regular business hours. Which for us, meant that we had to wait over a week to get water deep enough around the launch ramp and its approach. Fortunately, there was enough prep-work to do in San Carlos and neighboring Guaymas to keep us busy.

Marina Seca does not use a conventional TraveLift sling-type contraption for yanking boats out of their watery environment. Instead they use a tractor and an 8-arm hydraulic lift on a flatbed trailer-type dealio. Having now seen it in action up close, I think I might prefer it to a TraveLift. But here's a series of pics that better explains how the tractor operator eases the trailer into the water at the launch ramp; the hydraulic arms are separately raised to hold the boat steady; the tractor pulls the trailer - now supporting the boat - out of the water; and then the tractor pushes the boat and trailer for about 1/2 mile down San Carlos's highway toward Marina Seca, while the boat's owners trot along behind, taking pictures:

It seems from a first-timer's point of view that one advantage of this hydraulic-arm flatbed arrangement, is that each arm can be adjusted to fit any shape of hull, possibly better than a TraveLift's straps & cables can.  Another apparent advantage of the flatbed, is that the boat is already positioned at the general height the jackstands will be, once the boat is in the yard. It looked to me as if this made it easier on the yard workers to position the jackstands quickly and safely.

It was an interesting experience watching the tractor push The Fox down the highway, with The Fox and the flatbed trailer in reverse. So, if you're ever driving a car around the San Carlos area, keep a sharp eye out for any masts moving along, backwards, in areas where you know there's no water...

to be continued...

m

Comments

[Nick, Cindi & Nat Rathbone S/V Baloo]

Say "Hi" to Baloo, on the hard there in San Carlos!

If you want to see the nice awnings I sewed to keep the sun off her, I'm sure you can find them, in tatters, plastered against the leward chain link fence around Marina Seca. Ha Ha.

Have fun. Sorry you'll be out of the water, but it beats living in the yard at Seaview, for sure.