Continuing preparation of Every Day

This month we have to discuss our advisors, workers, and treatment at the yard. Everyone has the choice of the yard where they store their boat. Each yard has abilities and limitations, costs and relative value. When you choose your yard you may have the opportunity to have the yard work on you boat or do it yourself. Equipping and maintaining a cruising boat is a highly personal matter and so is choosing a yard to help you with the work and storage. For us, Sturgeon Bay Yacht Harbor could not have been a better place to go.

One of the reasons for choosing that yard is that none of the Chicago yards could lift the boat. Secondly, we stored our boat in-door heated (65 deg, not like Chicago just above freezing) for just more than the same price as out-door unheated in Chicago. We had planned to do a lot of the work ourselves this winter but both of us were working too much. We did make several multi-day trips to work on the boat this winter and some of that time was to make decisions on the work that the yard was doing.

Mallory has done much more cruising of the two of us. Even with that experience, we are depending on the yard to recommend how to do many of the repairs to the boat. It is hard to find a Midwest yard that has lots of saltwater experience.

Bill Schoendorf, the owner of the yard, has assembled some of the most experienced, competent and friendly group of yacht builders and workers we have found anywhere. Most of the yard guys have more than 20 years of experience building yachts at Palmer Johnson and the Yacht Harbor.

When we hire someone to do work on our boats it's different than having someone work on our homes, our lives depend on the work being done. Especially when you go long distances off shore. The work and advice the yard has done to date has been nothing less than miraculous and it's been done at a very reasonable price.

We have been able to prioritize what work we need to do now and next winter in preparation for the trip and still have a sailing season with the boat as well. Honestly, it might have been more sensible for us to leave the boat out of the water to get all of the work that needs to be done before we go. Part of what we need to do is to learn how everything works and were everything is.

The bottom line is that everyone should think very carefully where to store his or her boat. It might be worthwhile to go out of your way to store where you can work with the yard, trust that the yard work is done right and at a fair price. There are many competent yards. It is worthwhile to investigate yards that might be a little far away but in the long run cost less, especially since mid season failures can cost time on the water.