The approach

We got lucky. It turns out that Serenity chose to fall apart
in the very best place on the Bay, where transient moorage is cheap and there’s
a DIY boatyard just next door. It also doesn’t hurt that the yard, the Berkeley
Marine Center, is owned and managed by extremely helpful and generous people. To
make matters more fortunate, we have a pretty awesome insurance company
that is paying for this haul-out and might end up reimbursing some of the costs
of our keel repair (but that’s a different story). Suffice it to say, we worked
out a deal with the yard and our insurance to “haul and hang” over the weekend
so that we could reattach the rudder without having to take a swim (Bonus! Seeing
as I would probably be the one swimming).

The tricky part was getting to the yard. It’s just across
the harbor, which is only a 3-5 minute trip with a functioning rudder…but we
didn’t have one of those. Jeff had been thinking all week about how to fashion
an emergency rudder/tiller system. He had read some blurbs online about how
people use their spinnaker pole as a long tiller (the long stick we use to steer
the boat) and attach thick pieces of wood to it as their rudder (what the long
stick is attached to). He scavenged one of the seats from our port-a-bote
(folding boat) and fastened it to the end of the pole. The end product resembled
a Paul Bunyan sized tomahawk. It looked legit, but both of us were rightfully skeptical
of whether it would actually work.

Jeff’s going all cave-man on me. Wait, that sounds wrong.

We gave ourselves 20 minutes to get over to the marine lift
where they would pull us out of the water, assuming a best case scenario (ps. one
should never assume a best case scenario on a boat). It started out okay. Jeff
was having a heck of a time managing the gigantic stick without it rolling all
over the place, but he was able to pull a u-turn and get us facing in the right
direction. He was swearing up a storm, but it seemed like he had it under
control and I was pretty impressed that we had any maneuverability at all. This
whole experiment made me really grateful for our rudder.

Wish I could say it worked well. It was a good prototype, but we need to make some tweaks.

We had to strike a balance between moving (period) and
moving in the right direction. I ended up being the throttle girl. I’d give us
little bursts on the engine and then take us out of gear while Jeff tried to
maneuver us. This was a task that required both hands and full attention. Under this arrangement, Jeff on the stick and me on the throttle, we crawled along at about 1 knot and were
able to make it three quarters of the way there without too much trauma. But
then, as Murphy would have it, things started to get a little hairy all at
once.

The channel we needed to ease into was the narrowest one in
the whole marina, with boats parallel parked on our starboard side. There were
numerous sailboats coming in from an afternoon of sailing, a catamaran who
wanted to squeeze by us to get into his slip, and other boats going out for the
evening (this is a busy place). There were also boats coming out of and going into the marine lift, being shuffled from one place to the next.

At this point I was wishing we had a big sign around
our boat reading Caution: give us lots of
room, we don’t have nearly as much control as you think we do. Too wordy
for a sign, but some heads up would have been nice…at least maybe they might have
reserved judgement on our driving skills. When the boats finally passed us and
saw the giant tomahawk wagging at them, a look of understanding registered on
their faces. “Did you lose your rudder?” They would ask. And Jeff, yelling,
informed them that “No, we took it off and have been working on it back at the
yard and plan to put it back on this weekend.” A much longer answer than “Yes.”

After one failed attempt in which we almost ran into a
friendly gentleman’s bowsprit Jeff decided to hail harbor patrol on the radio.
A man driving the harbor patrol boat had been weaving in and out of the
lettered fingers, eyeing us the whole time. I’m sure he figured it was only a
matter of time before we asked for a hand. He was a pro – had us side tied in
no time and was deftly maneuvering us through the narrow channel without
kissing any other boats. We rafted up onto a Sea Ray at the end of the line,
where we waited for the yard to haul three more boats (did I mention that this
place is busy?)

Our makeshift tiller/rudder wasn’t good at precision maneuvers. This is the narrow entryway. We rafted up to the Sea Ray on the left with the help of the friendly Harbor Patrol.

At this point we put our heads together to think of ways to
get our boat across the finish line (a mere 25 yards). Option one was trying to
drag the boat in our tiny dinghy with our 2 horsepower engine. Option two was using our dinghy to get some ropes to the area near the marine lift where we could then pull
the boat. Option two seemed a more likely winner and I hopped in the dinghy
intending to motor the rope over to the lift operators. And here, I’ll tell you, that I’m
not a particularly skilled dinghy driver. I honestly don’t know how the thing
works…I just push all the buttons, pull all the cords and play with all the
levers until it fires up.

When it was go time the dinghy fired right up and I
unwittingly had the lever pointed at the rabbit on the throttle, rather than the
turtle. I zoomed off in a zig zag direction, pointed away from where I wanted
to be, with the rope wrapped around my ankle (didn’t think this one all the way
through). And too make matters more entertaining, there was an audience of at
least five guys all trying to give directions to me as I spun around in a
circle, obviously lacking control, with the rope attached to my body. Sure
enough the rope didn’t reach the dock, so I had to turn back and get some more rope to
extend it. As I approached Serenity I switched some levers to slow the dinghy
down and stop it…but it didn’t stop.

“Push the black button!” Jeff called to me.

“Which black button?” I asked, ever confused.

“The only black button.”

“I don’t see a black button!”

“It’s right next to your thumb.”

“You mean the primer?”

“It’s not the primer.”

“It’s not?”

“No, push it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes!”

“Huh. I thought it was the primer!” I stated, motor still
running, playing bumper boats with Serenity and the neighboring Sea Ray. Upon further inspection it has the word Stop as well as a stop sign on a sticker right next to it.

A reminder of my incompetence. Yup…rope burn.

To Jeff’s chagrin I’ve never been one to follow orders and
ask questions later, hence the conversation about the little black button. I’m stubborn
and proud, but also shortsighted and clumsy (among other more charming characteristics). Sure enough that magic black
button killed the engine and I was able to unwrap the rope from around my leg
and extend it with another rope (tied a bowline on the first go – too bad no
one was watching that part). I was much more skilled the second time around.
Jeff tells me that the guys at the boatyard probably appreciated the
entertainment at the end of a long day. I’m happy to be the entertainment…on
occasion. Thinking back on it, it must have been downright ridiculous to the
onlookers.

They pulled Serenity out of the water and we got to see her
belly again. Her belly is still clean from our last haul-out and the keel and
bow are solid. One of the women who works in the yard (who we befriended during
the Halloween boat crawl) came over to greet us with ice-cold Budweiser after the whole ordeal. We surely
got lucky.