Waterfront Winterization: Pulling out the boat lift on September 22, 2016.
There comes a time each autumn when summer has faded and winter is whispering over the waves. Or when work, travel, something eclipses the languid stretch of fall boating and watersports. Sometimes earlier, sometimes later, and as inevitable and bittersweet as fall foliage, waterfront winterization is an annual ritual that braces us practically and emotionally for the North Country’s frosty November through February.
The photo above chronicles the slow process of dragging the boat lift ashore. We use an electric winch and plenty of manpower. The aluminum dock is next. Rolling it in is the easy part. Lifting it up the stone terracing to higher ground is our version of crossfit.
Special thanks to Doug Decker, Erick Decker, Matt Smith, Alex Shepard, and Jeff Bigelow for making today’s waterfront winterization the smoothest and most efficient to date.
Boats on the Hard
Waterfront Winterization: Pulling the ski boat on September 21, 2016.
Usually in October, we haul Errant, our 31′ sailboat and Racy Rosslyn, our ski boat. This year we had to advance our haul dates to accommodate a busy fall schedule. In the photo above Racy Rosslyn is being towed away for winterization and storage.
Waterfront Winterization 2016: Errant is on the hard at a nearby shipyard.
Undocking 2022: ready to remove the docks (Source: Geo Davis)
Once upon a time undocking referred to a boat pulling away from a dock, a ship disembarking from a pier. At Rosslyn we also use the term to describe the annual autumn removal of docks (and boat lift) from Lake Champlain once the boats have been hauled and we begin to prepare for the North Country wintry. There’s also a more modern conotation in recent decades that summons grainy video footage of a spaceship uncoupling from the space station, or in a more quotidian context disconnecting technological devices or applications. For me today, in this post, undocking is all of these and more, a sort of metaphorical undocking, uncoupling, disconnecting as well.
Undocking 2022: docks removed (Source: Geo Davis)
Undocking v1.0
Let’s start with those first two photos above. Before and after autumn dock removal. In the first, an early morning photo, I sent the drone up for an end-of-season portrait of Rosslyn’s waterfront. A moody moment as if the lake and sky and the forces of nature were brooding, perhaps wavering, second guessing this seasonal transition. Less than a couple of hours later the boatlift sits high and dry (just barely visible north of the cottonwoods and west the multi stem maple) and the docks are lined up on the beach, their temporary home until late fall / early winter when they’ll be moved up onto the grassy terrace.
Undocking 2022: ready to remove the docks (Source: Geo Davis)
This third image, an aerial view directly above the boathouse, dock, and boatlift, offers a better perspective of the waterfront before undocking. And the photograph below offers virtually the same view except that the docks and boatlift have been stored on shore.
Undocking 2022: docks removed (Source: Geo Davis)
Of course, before proceeding with dock and boatlift removal, there’s an important prologue, disembarking in the Nautique ski/surf boat and the Chris Craft picnic boat for the final time of the season. So last Friday we hauled both boats for the winter, and today we removed the boatlift and the docks. Undocking complete, we’re —metaphorically speaking, at least — one step closer to our big seasonal transit. We’re temporarily unmoored. Unvesselled.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiCnGSnAgab/
Undocking v2.0
In the spring of 2021 I sold a 31’ sloop that I’d sailed around Lake Champlain for seven seasons. In retrospect, I suppose it was one of my pandemic pivots. Although I’d been considering selling it sooner rather than later, I had expected to hold onto the sailboat for at least another year or two. I was contemplating a move to a larger boat, and I was beginning to wonder aloud with Susan if it might be time to start thinking about coastal sailing, a step toward blue water sailing that has long beckoned me. I’ve explored my rather sudden decision to sell Errant elsewhere, so I’ll curtail that narrative here. But I’ve brought it up for two reasons.
For starters, selling Errant was part and parcel of an ongoing period of transition with roots well before — but catalyzed during — the pandemic. But there’s something more germane to the present context.
Usually when I headed out to sail it was for a span of hours. Maybe half a day. If lucky, maybe a day. But sometimes, when opportunity allowed, I would depart for days instead of hours. On occasion Susan would join me. More often I sailed solo. And whether heading out for a few hours of wind chasing or setting off on a multi day sailing adventure, I would experience a euphoric wave as I hoisted the sails. An exhilarating wave simultaneously deep in my gut, high in my heart, and even higher in my head would sweep over me. A sort of high that would fill me with enthusiasm and hope and a profound feeling of freedom.
Helming 6-tons of home, vessel, food, and plans into a stiff chop and a swift blow is one of my “happy places”, as the saying goes. A plan and an itinerary but also a comfortable awareness that circumstances and conditions could shift unexpectedly, that sailing by definition presupposes a state of fluidity and flux from undocking (or untethering) to setting anchor or returning to harbor.
To some degree this euphoric state is present every time I set out in any boat, any journey, any transition. Our seasonal migration between the lush shores of Lake Champlain and the high desert southwest is one of these undocking rituals. A setting out. An ending. A beginning. Closure. A fresh start. A new adventure. Another chapter. Seasonality writ large…
But I’m digressing and meandering. Back to the present, to removing the boats and storing them for the winter, to removing the docks and storing them for the winter, to winterizing the waterfront for the coming cold, the snow, the ice…
The present undocking is even more significant for us than usual. Or at least I have the sense that it is more significant. As we navigate a period of curated liminality, I am especially conscious of the uncoupling. The untethering. Sometimes a simple, familiar seasonal ritual — falling out of summer and into autumn, undocking vessels and the temporary means by which we secure them — turns out to be an integral constituent part of a larger, more profound transformation.
This is what I see when I look at the aerial photographs above. It is an awareness, a conscious yielding to the change(s) underway. I’m confident that Susan and I are both attuned to this liminality, that we’re aware and willing to embrace the shift, to immerse ourselves fully into what is feeling like a monumental shift in the proverbial seasons. I believe that we’re in the flow in a way that has eluded us in recent years. In many years really. This present undocking and its various rhizomic permutations feels more significant than its predecessors. In fact, this undocking is increasingly reminiscent of our transition from Manhattan to Essex 16 years ago. It’s still early. And it’s still unclear what exactly were moving through, moving toward. But we are journeying toward greater clarity each day.
Our caretaker adrift after the boat lift cable snapped and he leaped aboard. I taught him to operate a boat via mobile phone…
Boat Lift Moved in to Shallow(er) Water for Repair
Boat Lift Cable Shredded
Boat Lift Replacement Cable
New Boat Lift Chain Does Not Fit
Aborted Repair; New Chain too Short
We were sent the wrong chain: too short!
Boat Lift Chain Replaced
Boat Lift Repaired at Last
There is a musty old adage among boaters: “A boat is a hole in the water into which you throw money.” And time, I hasten to add.
It’s not only boats. It’s everything that has to do with boats. Boat lifts, for example.
“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.” ~ Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
I heartily agree with the Water Rat, but if ever I stop messing about with boats long enough to formulate a spreadsheet and fill it with calculations of the time and money I’ve poured into nautical endeavors, I’ll be forced to immediately stop boating. For I’ll certainly discover that each hour, no, each minute spent actually sailing or paddling or waterskiing has cost me a king’s ransom in time and treasure. For this reason, I’ll never attempt the calculations because – truth be told – no sensible person can justify recreational boating.
It’s not the boating itself, you see. It’s everything else. It’s maintaining and preparing the boat and tidying up after boating. It’s making sure the boat consistently, reliably works, and fixing the boat when it doesn’t. And it’s all of the peripheral tasks like installing and removing the dock and the boat lift each spring and fall. And fixing them when they break… No, that sounds far too easy.
Time to Sing the Boat Lift Blues
Until yesterday, a broken boat lift was the most recent foible co-conspiring with six straight weeks of rain to dramatically dampen our 2013 boating season. But this morning, when the luxurious responsibility of returning the lift to deeper water and transporting the Ski Nautique from the Essex Shipyard back to Rosslyn’s waterfront, I am at last willing to summarize the boat lift blues.
I will refrain from sharing the boat lift manufacturer’s name, because I do not wish the company ill, nor do I hold them totally accountable for the parade of mishaps which have stunted our boating season significantly. And I genuinely believe that the manufacturer has made an effort to help us resolve this mess. An imperfect effort, but an effort. So I’ll spare them embarrassment and you the sort of grumbling that grates at our emotions like nails on a chalkboard.
Rather than chronicling Rosslyn’s 2013 boat lift blues in the nail biting detail that my bride would readily offer, I’ll recap a few highlights and get on with it. Why? Because the only greater truism about boating than its uneconomical folly is that boaters enjoy, no, love laughing at the boating misfortunes of other boaters. Sophomoric you say? Perhaps. But nautical nuts seek sweet recompense where it swims. So today, I offer my misadventures for your psychological succor. Enjoy.
The photo gallery above captures the trajectory of our boat lift blues and quickest and tiniest terms. The slightly more dilated story begins back in March or April. Normally we take advantage of Lake Champlain‘s boating “pre-season”, launching in early May when the water temperature is still in the 30s. But our Santa Fe sojourn and cross-country walkabout this spring resulted in a later launch, timed to follow our late may return to Essex. We padded launch day with enough time to install the dock and boat lift, and by the beginning of June we were ready to make up for lost time.
We were ready, but the meteorologists had other plans for us. Rain.
Despite the unseasonably low Lake Champlain water levels when we returned from the Southwest — so low in fact that North Country pundits were already lathered up about the causes and impact of shallow water — meteorologists began to dish up rain. And then more rain. And then still more rain.
So the boat was in the water. But the miserable weather prevented us from using it. And worse? We had to raise the boat lift every day or two just to ensure that the rising lake Champlain water levels wouldn’t sweep our craft away. Day after day, week after week lake levels rose and we elevated the ski boat up, up, up.
Until the fateful day. My bride was abroad. And I had just boarded the ferry to Vermont. I was scheduled to be de-pretzel-ized by my chiropractor in Shelburne, and noticing how high the waves were coming to the boat, I called Doug (our handy man / caretaker) on my mobile phone with a request to stop at the waterfront on his way to lunch and raise the boat lift once again.
And then suddenly my phone was ringing. In a rushed jumble of panicky language he explained to me that the lift broke and the boat was bobbing in the waves. No, worse. the boat was in danger of cracking up in the rough water, either smashing against the stone retaining wall, or against the dock, or against the boathouse. He was worried about all three options. I was worried about a fourth, I was worried that the boat might crush him. It’s worth noting that he doesn’t swim. In fact, is not at all fond of water. Nor is he a boater. He’s never been in a boat so far as I know, and he’s often told me that he doesn’t know how to operate a boat. And yet somehow he was clinging to the broken boatlift, a wave-rocked dock, a bobbing boat weighing is much as his pickup truck, and carrying on it panicky dialogue with me on his mobile phone.
A Messy Situation
Within minutes Doug had managed to open up the boat cover, turn on the batteries, started the boat, learned how to use the throttle, and pulled away from Scylla and Charybdis into Lake Champlain’s rougher but presently safer waters.
We remained in telephone contact as he learned how to operate the boat, and I arrived in Charlotte, Vermont long enough to reboard the Essex-bound ferry. As I chugged back across the lake with a half dozen other commuters, I looked out for our boat. The image of a shoreline above with a tiny runabout was my first view of man and boat intact, waiting for me to arrive and help him dock at the Essex Shipyard. In short order I received permission from the marina’s operator to store our boat for the foreseeable future while we repaired our boatlift.
In the weeks since then we have tried and tried and tried to repair the boat lift. At first it appeared that the cable had sheared and snapped. So the manufacturer sent as a replacement. Although it took a week to arrive, I was elated to have it in my hands, and I immediately hauled tools to the waterfront. Unfortunately I discovered that one of the three chains, akin to oversized motorcycle chains, which connect the gears inside the lift was broken. Snapped. Another conversation with the manufacturer, and this time the shipping was prompt and gratis. Again, my spirits soared. Unfortunately while attempting to install the replacement chain discovered another setback. The replacement chain was about 56 inches shorter than the one it was intended to replace. Another conversation with the manufacturer, more frustrated now, and curt but told me he’d figured out. A few days later the correct chain arrived. My bride backed me up with a bucket beneath the lift to ensure that any falling parts wouldn’t sink to the bottom of the lake, and after an hour or so of mechanical microsurgery the chain was installed and working. Yesterday the caretaker and I managed to thread the new cable through the lift and perform a successful test. Today I’ll retrieve the boat from the marina to whom I owe a gargantuan debt of gratitude. Will pull the lift back out to the end of the dock, and — just in time for latest round of houseguests — we will once again be able to use the boat conveniently from Rosslyn’s waterfront.
That’s the boat lift blues. Sing them with me, and hope with me that the lift work properly, unfailingly for the balance of the boating season. All aboard!
