The Modern Day Nomads

It was hot and it was humid. We arrived at The Norwalk Cove Marina at 10AM to have the Vineyard Vixen surveyed and released back into the water for a Sea Trial. The Vineyard Vixen looked like it had seen better days. No major damage was done, however Hurricane Irene presented the boat with lots of leaves and sediment to give it a nice brown layer in the cockpit.

The Good: The surveyor that was recommended to us, Barnaby Blatch, was extremely thorough in and out of the water. We researched him before hand and found many positive reviews on his work and we have to say, he was excellent.

John Longley, the listing broker was also fantastic throughout the day. He even personally ran the starter (we’ll get to that later) to the repair shop a good 30 minutes away (on 95…yikes!).

The Bad:  We had been at the marina since 10 AM and everything had been going more or less pretty smoothly. It was about 1 PM when the mechanic came over to de-winterize the engine and get it going for the Sea Trial*. The starter didn’t turn over, when they took it out it was rusted (fresh rust) and needed to be sent to get repaired to see if the engine worked. What does this mean? Well, no engine means no Sea Trial, no Sea Trial means we’d have to pay for our surveyor to come back another day when it got fixed. OK, that’s bad but it can be fixed and we can move forward. The survey continued and then about 4:30 PM the other shoe dropped. They found water in the transmission oil. Oh, no. That’s not good…

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