Mark and I arrived early at Lake City Marina on Lake Pepin in Minnesota, around 11:30 or so. The boat is scheduled to arrive around 12 noon. We have been exchanging several phone calls with the truck driver with updates on his estimated time of arrival. This day had been scheduled and well orchestrated in advance with the coordination of transport company, marina, rigger and our work schedules, all converging to come together at the same time.

This has been a great journey, so far, through the buying process and in many ways our journey is just beginning. We are so excited to see our boat in MN and with her here…it will finally seem real for us. Up until now, we keep having to pinch ourselves to see if we are just dreaming.

And, here comes the truck…..

Wow, she looks great! We had the yard in Florida put on new bottom paint, wash, wax and compound the hull and re-paint the blue strip at the water line before she was shipped. Boy, did they do a great job.

We had several of the guys from Lake City Marina helping us unload her from the truck and get her positioned in the lift to splash her in the water. They clearly lift, haul and splash boats into the water all the time and are quite good at what they do, however this process still seems anxiety provoking for a boat owner to watch.

Took about 6 guys to lift the mast off the truck (about 300 – 400 lbs? and 54′), they positioned the mast in an out of the way area in the parking lot for us to work on reattaching everything to the mast that was removed for transport.

Lots of work to be done over the next few days for sure, however we couldn’t be more excited to dive in and make her ours.