Although Hazel and I have been an item since 2017 and Rhett and Sunny signed-on in 2020 with their first voyages aboard, recommissioning and re-provisioning her after a winter layup takes confidence. Which at times is hard to muster when suffering from something like imposter syndrome.
The confidence comes from the fact that we’ve done this before, we’ve sailed with all this gear and these spares and it has fit…somewhere. We’ve re-provisioned her after a winter with table salt being the only food item left onboard.
In the boatyard, Hazel’s keel rests on wooden blocks on the dusty gravel and her hull is supported by metal jacks. Clambering aboard entails climbing up a 10-foot ladder. While I’ve compared Hazel to a “tiny house” in the past, perhaps this is the “tiny treehouse” version of her. Standing on deck when she’s “on the hard” in the boatyard puts our eye-level about 20 feet off the ground and affords a nice view of the Mediterranean. Nice when the weather is fair and the wind not whipping. However, this is the Aegean Sea and the Aegean blows hard.
On deck, on the hard, on a breezy day (of which there are many) I pause my work and look out over the channel between the Greek mainland (where Hazel is) and the island of Makronisos my throat goes dry and bowels clench. The wind funnels and accelerates between the relatively narrow constriction of the mainland and island, and drives whitecaps and a nasty chop. I sailed in that last year? And enjoyed it? Best not to look too long and just try to be confident, Yes I did. Yes we did, and we had a great time doing it.
The reason I say “something like imposter syndrome,” is that the unmodified term “imposter syndrome” implies that it’s not real, just a aberration of self-perception. I suppose you could chuckle and brush it off by saying, “Oh I’m sure that sailing for you two is just like riding a bike, once you learn you never forget.” But that’s easy for you to say, you’re not the imposter.
Rhett feels the same…I know. Although she doesn’t have the pressures of being the captain, she doesn’t have the lifetime of sailing experience. I just keep telling myself, We’ll work it out. Be confident. It will all come together.
This is our first time wintering Hazel on the hard. There are some benefits to her spending the winter out of the water—for starters, she can’t sink while unattended. However, there are some downsides for the crew returning to her. Sure, there’s the physical aspect of up and down a ladder many times per day and often with supplies, gear, or provisions (or Sunny). But, and more importantly, there’s the emotion and feel of Hazel. On the hard, she feels like a house (albeit that tiny house) there’s no movement, no give, no animation. On the hard, the step down from the coach to the deck feels like the bottom step and floor in a house.
That same step while she’s on the water feels like tapping the back of a finely built ukulele or guitar—it rings. Your foot contacts the deck and she gives just a little bit and the reverberations flow down her timbers to the water and then back up your leg—you are one with something you love.
My previous post was entitled Splash Eve and posted on Sunday, May 19. It turns out, I lied (not the first time, won’t be the last). Bright and early, Monday morning we checked out of our rented room in town and hustled down to Hazel in the boatyard only to get a call from Michalis, our guy doing and organizing the winter work on Hazel, that the yard wasn’t going to be launching boats on Monday due to “port control.” (Probably because of a number of big ships entering and exiting the harbor and not having room on the sea wall for the crane to drop small yachts into the water.) Oh well, nothing to be done—port control is port control. That night, we ended up sleeping on Hazel in the boatyard which was a first for us. The lack of movement, lack of life in her was unsettling. Don’t get me wrong we love a calm anchorage and a calm berth, but the calmest calm is worlds different than the hard.
Finally, on Tuesday midday the crane and crawler showed up and the crane crew gently fitted forward and aft lifting slings on Hazel, lifted her off the blocks and jacks. After a bit of jostling and tugging of lines from Hazel to the ground crew, they expertly threaded the needle set her onto the specially modified “crawler.” Then, it was a creeping quarter-mile from the yard to the launch-point on the seawall. As we followed behind Hazel in Michalis’ foreman Nicos’ car, I was reminded of the Apollo rockets making their slow journey from Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building to the launchpad.
At the seawall we were met by another crane who gingerly lifted her off the crawler and swung her out over the water. As she was lowered, Rhett, Sunny, and I—and an engineer who had done much of the winter mechanical work—boarded her when she was at seawall level. We held our breath as her keel disappeared into the Mediterranean Sea. We realized with relief that at least Hazel hadn’t forgotten how to float. She had upheld her end of the bargain, now we had to remember the sailing part. The engineer and I fired up Ox and checked for leaks. (If a fitting hasn’t been tightened properly it can leak like a sieve—and you want to find that out while the boat is still in the slings and can be lifted out of the water if need be.)
After all checked-out, the engineer departed and we motored across the harbor to a dockside berth for several nights of final work and provisioning and waiting for some good weather.
I write this on Thursday night with our departure early tomorrow morning for the first sail of the year! (Tomorrow is Friday and we’ve got to be gone by midday as this is a very busy charter harbor and most charter boats turnover on the weekends and every berth in the harbor is occupied by returning charter boats.)
Thanks for reading and do stay tuned. It looks like our new tracking device is working perfectly and will be showing our near-real-time location as we sail (map posted on our home page, if you zoom way in you can actually see our progress from the boatyard across the harbor when we launched). If all goes according to plan, you’ll be seeing us work our way northward between mainland Greece and the Island of Evia (Nisos Evvvoia or Νήσος Eúboia for you graecophiles).
Fair winds and following seas!