Well Saturday morning we woke early, like 4 am early. Which according to Cindy is still the middle of the night. We were on the road headed to Chicago by 5 am. It was cool with a steady drizzle all the way to the state line where the rain stopped and the clouds cleared. It was beautiful morning in Chi town to get our Memory Maker. We arrived a bit early so off to Dunkin Donuts for eats and some tasty beverages. We met the owner of the SJ in the parking lot of the storage yard where it was being stored. Once the boat came into view I could tell it was not quite as nice as I had been told but as I have learned my idea of nice and other's idea of nice are not the same when it comes to sailboats. We looked over the boat and while it had a few issues non were what we considered major. We headed to the owners house to look at the sails and other items. Turns out the boat had 7 sails instead of the five listed. He had two sails in sail bags he had never even looked at. Wound up having a main sail, one standard jib, one storm jib, two genoa sails, and two spinnaker sails. The one Spinnaker was really pretty and in really good shape with just one little bad spot in a seam that we could easily repair. While the boat came with a 4.5 hp Mercury motor, after talking with the owner I knew it was probably going to me more of a problem than it was worth as it had gotten hot due to an impeller failure. So we made an offer to buy the boat, trailer, and sails, without the motor. The owner then decided to throw in all the accessories that he had for the boat and countered our offer with all the goodies. While there was a lot there a lot of it was stuff we would never use so I counter his countered and we agreed on a price. So we headed back to the storage yard to hook up to the trailer and make sure the new lights worked and that the trailer bearings were ok. All that checkout ok so after adding air in the tires we started to head back to his house to load up all the other items. We pulled out onto the street and at about 25 mph I could a feel a vibration starting in the drivetrain of the Toyota 4 Runner we borrowed to go get the boat. As we got to 35 mph it was just getting worse so I flashed the lights and pulled over. I told the owner of the boat the issue and that we could not get the boat home with it the 4 Runner shaking like it was as I was not going to tear up someone's transmission hauling a toy home for us. He understood and we did a really slow lap around the block. We parked the boat back where we got it, apologized for taking up his morning, and headed back. Boatless.
Trying to make the most of our big day out we did stop at a really cool looking winery just down the road from the storage yard. It was large ivy covered old house that just gave one the impression that the wine was going to be of the dry variety and expensive. Never found out if the wine was dry or not as Cindy saw the prices started at 25 bucks a bottle while I was washing my hands. I could tell by the look on her pretty lil face something was up when I came back to meet her. U must understand, we like wine, sweet wine, and the only thing better is good, cheap, sweet wine! So we bailed out the side door and started back down the interstate. I treated Cindy to a delicious lunch of Taco Bell at a road side travel plaza. Nothing like living large LOL!
We did stop at a couple really neat wineries on the way back home. Carpenter Creek north of Lafayette IN and Wildcat Creek at Lafayette. We were hoping to have dinner with Capt Scott and Marry in Lafayette but they were not able to meet till 7:30 and we were a couple hours early. So we found a nice sunny parking spot in the park across from there house and curled up together in the passenger seat with the sun shining in on us like a couple of fat cats and we took a nice lil nap while we waited. The nap felt great as I was getting kinda tired and I love to cuddle. We woke up about 7 and took a short walk to wake up. We met Capt Scott and Mary for dinner and shared the details of our day with them. They could understand our disappointment but also understood. Scott had burned up a transmission pulling a boat once so he totally understood my erroring on the side of caution. We had a nice dinner at a little mom and pop restaurant that is located on the opposite end of the block they live on. The sign advertised the coldest beer in town. Cindy put them to the test then asked for a glass of ice for her beer. Cindy likes her beer to be just above the freezing point.
We made it home safely about 20 hours after we left. We are bummed we did not have our Memory Maker sitting in the drive but relieved that we did not tear up the 4 Runner or break down along side some interstate on the south side of Chicago. It could have been much worse and we both knew that.
So where do we go from here?? Well, this Saturday morning we are going to get up early, again, and going to lake Monroe for the drawing for the buoy's at the Paynetown SRA in hopes that our name will get drawn. If it does then we will figure out a way to get the SJ 21 in Chicago home. If not then we are done searching till we get our own vehicle we can tow a boat with.
