Bringing her home

What a day!

I met Ronnie at 6:15 in Oxford, and we set out in his truck for Midlothian to pick up the boat. We stopped for fuel and breakfast in South Hill. I had told the Previous Owner (PO) that we'd be there around 9:00 or 9:30, so we weren't hurrying.

We met the PO a few minutes before 9:30. I gave him the balance of the money due from the eBay auction, and he signed over the titles for the boat and the trailer. We looked over the boat, which was in better shape than I had expected. My only real concern was the trailer tires... the sidewalls had some small cracks and I wasn't sure how much dry rot there might be. The tread was good and they had air in them, and there was a spare, so I figured we might make it to Nelson without a problem. The PO had printed directions to the DMV, so we set off to get a license plate.

We got to the DMV about 10:00. The parking lot was packed -- not a good sign. There was a line. A long line. It wasn't a long line for service, it was a long line to get into the building. The security guard at the door was patiently explaining that the building had as many people inside as the local fire code would allow, and he could only let one person in for each person that came out. It was at least 40 minutes before I even got to take a number. At least I could sit down at that point.

Finally, my number came up and I got to the window. It went fairly quickly after that, and by 12:30 I was out the door, license plate in hand. We drove back to the marina. The PO was still there, he had opened up the hatches and killed the hornets who had taken up residence in the cabin. He showed me everything he knew about the boat, we hooked up the trailer, and went down to the IHOP for lunch.

Around 2:00 we were back on the highway. I saw a truck stop at exit 58 and decided to find out just how much of a load we were towing. We knew from the MacGregor literature that the Venture 222 weighs in at 1,800 pounds, but I got a shock when I looked at the printout from the scales. 2,440 pounds on the axle. (I can only guess at the tongue weight on the hitch, probably somewhere between 200 and 300 pounds, for a total of around 2,700 pounds.) This was far more than I expected. I was really getting worried about the tires, but they looked ok so far.

We were approaching exit 34 when the starboard side tire blew out. That's when I found out that Ronnie doesn't have a jack or a lug wrench in his truck. But we could see the exit, and an Exxon sign, so we hoped it might be a service station. We slowly limped down the ramp and saw that it was only a convenience store with gas pumps, but at least we were off the highway. As we pulled into the parking lot we noticed what looked like a small mechanic's shop across the street. Ronnie went to check it out.

It turned out that it wasn't a mechanics shop, it was a recycling center. But it was no ordinary recycling center, it was a recycling center that was housed in a building that used to be a tire store, and the old floor jacks and lug wrenches were still there. In no time at all, we had replaced the tire with the spare and were on our way. We were feeling so lucky about finding those tools that we stopped in the convenience store and each of us bought a lottery ticket. Surely the Gods were smiling on us.

We had just crossed the Mecklenburg County line and were thinking we were home free when we felt the vibration... the port side tire was flat. We still didn't have a lug wrench or a jack, and now we had no spare. So maybe the Gods weren't smiling at us; maybe it was more like a snicker.

We weighed our options. We could limp along the shoulder to South Hill, about ten miles. After a mile, we had a better idea. We unhitched the trailer and left it next to the highway while we went into town in search of replacement tires. Ronnie called his dad, who agreed to bring us a jack and lug wrench. As we unhooked the trailer I noticed that a big chunk of tread had come off the spare which was mounted on the starboard side.

We checked Home Depot, no trailer tires. So we went to Wal Mart. They had 8" and 12" trailer tires already mounted on rims, but our trailer has 13" tires. Hmmm. They had 13 inch car tires. We had a 13" rim in the truck. So we were going to buy a tire and have them mount it, then go put it on the trailer, tow it in, and buy another tire for the other side.

It turned out that there was only one employee at work (if you can call it that) in the tire and oil center, and he didn't want to work on tires -- he was an oil-change guy. And there were four other tire jobs ahead of us. Well, the manager explained to the oil guy that he was now a tire guy and he got to work. And a second employee returned from his break. But it was still obvious that we were going to be there for a while. Ronnie went to meet his dad and get the jack and lug wrench, went back to the boat, took off the flat, and came back to Wal Mart. He got there just as the slacker was starting on tire #1.

There was a little problem. The tire had shredded itself when it blew out, and the fancy tire-changing machine couldn't get a grip on it to pull it off the rim. Oil guy worked it over with a prybar, a hammer, and a big screwdriver trying to get it off. Occasionally he would put it back on the machine and fail at that, too. It took him a full hour to get that tire off the rim. The second one was easier. It was 7:05 PM when I paid for the tires and we got on our way.

We stopped in Clarksville to refuel Ronnie's truck. The receipt for 25-1/2 gallons of dieself fuel we had burned is time-stamped 8:21 PM. It was almost 9:00 when we pulled into Ed and Brenda's yard, nearly 15 hours after we had started this adventure. We blocked up the trailer, and Angela climbed aboard to peek inside the boat before it got too dark to see. Then we went inside to eat the burgers and hot dogs Angela had cooked for us. By the time we arrived back at home, it was nearly midnight.

This was much more of an adventure than I had anticipated, but we had accomplished a lot. We managed to get the boat home. We got new trailer tires (which I had planned to do anyway, but they weren't at the top of the "to do" list). And I got a new friend, Ronnie. Nothing cements a friendship faster than shared adversity and working together to overcome obstacles.