16 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
There was a slight drizzle in the morning, so we emptied some more lockers getting ready to pack into boxes. When it stopped raining, Glenys finished off washing the hull and I wandered over to Roger’s workshop and painted the seacock handles.
In the afternoon, I gathered together the boat’s documentation and took it along to Free State Yachts. There’s quite a bit of paperwork - Bills of Sale for all owners; Lloyds certification; European CE certification; VAT documents for when the boat left the UK; USA customs documents, etc.
Americans have to register all boats with an engine larger than 3hp, which includes our dinghy. Under our cruising permit, we’re exempt from this regulation, but in order to sell the dinghy, we have to produce the original invoices for the dinghy and the outboard. Fortunately, I was able to find both pieces of paper.
Back at the boat, I lowered myself into the 6foot deep, cramped anchor locker and spent a couple of hours washing and then wire brushing the loose old paint off. I’m not looking forward to painting it.
17 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
Glenys spent most of the day packing our personal effects into four boxes and a cargo bag. The plan is for us to only carry one cargo bag and my guitar case onto the plane back to the UK, so we sorted through our belongings and left ourselves with only enough clothes to last the two remaining weeks. When Glenys had finished, we loaded the boxes and bag onto trolleys and trundled them ½ mile to store them in Roger’s workshop for a few days.
I spent five hours sweating in the engine room. I changed the coolant in the engine and the generator, which took ages - not helped by the one hour delay while I cycled to the hardware store to get some more antifreeze and oil. I then changed the oil in the engine and the generator, so both now have clean oil and strong enough antifreeze to survive a cold American winter.
18 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
We had a long but productive day. Glenys washed down the teak on the deck, coach roof and cockpit, which took most of the day. She used a mixture of 2/3 cup of bleach, 4 table spoons of Tri-Sodium Phosphate and a dash of washing up liquid in a bucket of water. There was a terrific amount of dirt that came off the deck and it looks very clean now with a slight teak colour rather than grey-silver.
I fitted the painted seacock handles and replaced a few teak plugs in the aft coach-roof and toe rail. I then cleared the lazarette and gave it a good clean. It’s amazing how much stuff came out of the locker, so I was ruthless and threw a load of stuff into the skip.
After lunch, I cleaned the main sump bilge, which was looking pretty grim and while I was at it, I cleaned a couple more in the aft cabin.
I then tackled the odious job of painting the anchor locker. By squatting uncomfortably in the bottom of the locker for an hour, I managed to paint the top half. I then tried lying on the deck, hanging upside down to paint the bottom half, but it was like doing sit-ups for ½ hour and I couldn’t reach more than 2/3 of the way down, so I’ll finish off tomorrow with a paint brush on the end of a pole.
Only one more day until the viewing, but I think that we’ve done most of the work - we’ve removed a lot of our clutter from the boat, the deck looks great and the hull looks good. All we have to do tomorrow is clean and polish the inside woodwork and tidy up.
19 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
Only ten more sleeps until we fly back to the UK. Glenys talked to the shipping company about sending our belongings back to the UK and discovered that DHL sometimes refuse to take cargo bags and we have a cargo bag in our consignment. Somehow we needed to repack into a box, so Glenys walked to West Marine and scrounged a large cardboard box, which we cut to the same dimensions as the cargo bag and put the whole bag inside - job sorted.
Unfortunately, sorting out the shipping took ages, so we didn’t get started on cleaning the boat until 11:30. The rest of the day was a frenzy of finishing off small jobs, cleaning and polishing the interior woodwork. By 17:00, we’d done as much as we could and the boat looked great.
In the evening, we invited Vince and Lara from a HR40.
20 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
We were up early again and rushed around tidying away our bedding and the various covers that we use to cover the upholstery. At 10:20, we were still polishing woodwork, when Roger rang to say that the prospective buyers had arrived early and could they come around in 10 minutes? The boat was in chaos, but we said yes and quickly pushed all our cleaning materials into shopping bags and into lockers. Five minutes later, we had a pristine looking show boat.
I must say that after all our hard work, Alba looks terrific, I’m amazed at how well the interior woodwork has survived 8 years and 40,000 miles at sea. The upholstery is spotless and even the 19 year old carpet looks great. The teaks decks and the hull look fabulous even though we’ve only done a first pass at cleaning everything.
Roger spent an hour showing the punters around while we kept out of the way in the air-conditioned resident’s lounge. The showing went well and they were impressed by the super condition of the boat and how well it had been maintained. Roger later said that there were no negative points raised on the boat, so we don’t have to do any extra work in the remaining 9 days - we just need to finish off my job list.
DHL arrived at 13:20 to pick up our five boxes, but the T-Mobile signal has been dropping out all day and we missed his call. The marina office even rang us, but they didn’t get through either. At 13:30, I checked our messages, but by the time that we got to the marina office, the driver had already gone. Glenys rang DHL, but has had to reschedule the pickup for tomorrow - it’s so frustrating.
It was a boiling hot day, so we declared a work-free afternoon and spent time planning what to do when we finally get to the UK.
21 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
It was a cooler start to the day, so I painted the rest of the anchor locker using a paint brush taped to the end of a long pole. I then ran fresh water through the outboard by placing a large bucket around the lower end and filling it with fresh water. The idea was to flush out the corrosive sea water and it worked well. I then poured in a load of antifreeze so that the pump and system are now winterised.
Meanwhile Glenys plodded on with the administrative nightmare of sending our belongings to the UK. She received a notification from DHL that we’d been charged £30 import duty and taxes for our previous consignment, so it took nearly an hour to find out why. It seems that if any items in a consignment are listed as originating outside the EU then VAT is due and the UK customs simply slap the charge on the whole consignment. Our consignment was listed as being worth $100US, so they hit us for 20% and DHL charged us a £12 admin fee.
This meant that Glenys had to redo the paperwork for today’s consignment, stating that all goods originated in the UK. Unfortunately, the custom’s value has been set at $500 and we can’t change it without cancelling the pickup, so at worst we’ll get hit for 20% of $500. Fingers crossed, it will all go through without any charge.
The DHL guy rang Glenys twice and she confirmed that she wanted him to come to the marina office. The pickup went okay and by 14:00, Glenys was a mellow person again.
After lunch, I paddled the dinghy around to the dinghy dock and we pulled it up to the dinghy racks. I removed the wheels from the transom because they are too easy to steal. Glenys went back later and gave the dinghy a good cleaning.
I did a few more jobs in the afternoon and fitted a new bilge pump switch. I’ve been carrying the switch around with me for two years and had a bracket made in Trinidad, which was 8 months ago. I’ve been putting the job off, but in the end it only took an hour. Amusing to think that we haven’t had a working automatic bilge pump for over two years and I finally fit it the day before we permanently haul out.
22 May 2019 Herrington Harbour North, Virginia
It was haul-out day. We pottered about in the morning until 10:30 when Enterprise Car Rental collected us from the marina in a monster pickup truck and took us to their office about 20 miles away. We went through the normal registration process and then they told us that we’d been upgraded to a better car.
My hopes for a BMW M3 were dashed when he told us that we were to have the Monster Pickup Truck. I was not happy and expressed my dismay. The guy seemed really surprised that I was not pleased to have a gas-guzzling, huge vehicle and said that they didn’t have anything else left. Eventually, after a few words, they gave us a smaller pickup truck, which had not been valeted and they promised to deliver a proper car tomorrow.
We high-tailed it back to the marina and, after a quick lunch, the haul-out team arrived. Herrington Harbour has a haul-out procedure that is very different to anything that we’ve seen. They are obviously used to hauling out and launching boats without the rich owners being present. The team has a small tender with a 25hp engine, which they tie onto the back of the boat to be moved. This provides the propulsion and someone steers the boat using the normal steering wheel.
It’s a very good method because they don’t need the erratic owner to be present or the boat engine to work. I’ve been watching the team for the last two weeks and they are incredibly proficient at manoeuvring boats. The team leader asked if I wanted to drive the boat around to the haul-out dock - I politely declined, mostly because we were on a falling tide and I was terrified of going aground. As I watched them push Alba away from our berth, I sadly realised that I will never sail on her again.
I watched the team lift Alba out of the water using a large 85 tonne lift, which was controlled by a guy using a remote control box. I thought at first that it was a bit of a gimmick, but the guy was able to move around the travel lift and make sure that the slings were in the correct place. After pressure washing, Alba was trundled to her final resting place next to Free State Yacht Brokerage.
Meanwhile, Glenys was washing the dinghy and I went to help her lift it onto the storage rack. We covered the dinghy with a tarpaulin (Americans call it a “tarp”) and the dinghy will stay there until the new owner collects it.
We headed back to Alba; cleared stuff out of lockers and the fridges; loaded it into our pickup truck and shot off to our AirBnB. We just made it for the appointed time and settled into living ashore. The house that we’ve rented is not that special and we feel a little sad to have moved off Alba - our home for 8 years.