This was an incredibly fun article to write for SAIL. And, perfect timing on its publication as Phillip and I are just about to come up on a year from the time we bought our 2015 Outbound 46, s/v Ubiquitous (lovingly called “UbiQ”), in March, 2021. How time flies … The idea for this article—Tacking On a Header—came to me as I was sitting one day, working, at the end of Ego Alley in Annapolis (where we spent most of our time last year) and I saw a little sailboat tacking back and forth up the tight alley, harnessing the wind brilliantly. As soon as the old sailing adage hit my brain it felt like the perfect analogy for what Phillip and I had done in making the very difficult decision to sell our old 1985 Niagara 35, which we absolutely loved, and buy a newer, more complicated but spacious and capable boat. We tacked on a header and now, a year in—with the beauty of hindsight—we have found it was most definitely the right call. Our Outbound 46 is … well, to put it frankly, a dream boat.
I hope the article helps explain some of our thought processes when making the transition and what we considered our top priorities in shopping for a new(er) boat. Be sure to pick up a copy of SAIL’s March issue and let me know what you think. Many thanks to the entire crew at SAIL Magazine for selecting my piece and putting together such a nice spread. It was a lot of fun to share with the former owners of UbiQ—Jim and Ann—when the issue came out! (You’ll find Jim in several photos in the spread sporting his bright orange toboggan! : ). Phillip and I were lucky in that we didn’t just get a boat in the deal, we made two very good new friends as well. Enjoy the piece!
Snapping a fun pic with UbiQ’s former owners, Jim and Ann, with the SAIL March issue!There’s Jim in the orange toboggan!
Our survey/sea-trial (back in March, 2021) was such a memorable day. Both brokers and the surveyor, who have all participated in dozens, maybe hundreds, of survey/sea-trials, said it was the most congenial, fun, smooth-and-easy survey/sea-trial any of them had ever attended. I think all parties involved just knew this was the right move for UbiQ! I like to believe that anyway! We certainly love her and can only hope we take equally good care of her as Jim and Ann did. They’ll be joining us aboard here and there to make sure we do! : D
Every bone and organ in my body slid downward. Phillip and I couldn’t quite wrap our heads around it at first. UPS had lost our package. The big, 15-pound box that contained both the old and new riser/elbow we’d had fabricated for the Yanmar engine on our new Outbound. It didn’t seem entirely possible. Lost? Like forever? Lost? While that news was bad enough, the reality of the situation sent an even colder realization up my spine.
It was later September in Annapolis. That meant two things. The boat show was coming. And winter was coming. That also meant every marine vendor within a 50-mile radius was booked for months trying to get boats ready for the show and ready to go. If our engine didn’t get up and running soon, Phillip and I wouldn’t be going anywhere, much less south, for the winter. All this work and effort and money and hours we put into getting our new Outbound and planning our getaway to the islands for the 2021 cruising season was about to be shot. Like a flailing duck in the sky. Boom. Done. Although Phillip and I had jokingly said our loose plan for the season had been to simply “not winterize the boat,” that off-hand remark was quickly morphing from a joke into our new reality. Phillip and I could not ignore the very real prospect that if we didn’t find someone to magically concoct a new riser/elbow out of thin air for us and get our engine running, our new beautiful offshore, island-bound boat was about to be hauled back out at Jabin’s yard and wrapped for the winter. Wrapped? Nuh-uh. Nope. The answer was no. There was only one solution to this problem.
I got desperate. I got dressed. I got cookies.
Late September, 2021: Running Out of Time; Running Out of Options
As I mentioned, we had tried our previous fabricator to see if he could re-create another new riser/elbow one from scratch (i.e., without the old one to use as a template). He was having cataract surgery. One eye, then the other, over a three-week period. So, nope. We tried Collection Yachts, the outfit that had purchased Outbound Yachts. The Chinese yard in Xiamen, where Outbounds are built, was on holiday. *sigh* But, Ryan Dunham with Collection, was surprisingly sympathetic. He offered to search the Collection warehouse and then contact other owners to see if he could find us one. While it was certainly a generous offer (he didn’t owe us anything). That wasn’t a guarantee or a quick, immediate answer, both of which we needed. I knew it was time to break out the big guns.
Cookies.
I’ve often found these work wonders when you’re headed to a shipyard to ask a marine vendor for a favor. Never underestimate the value of a cookie. Or some humility. I was well-stocked on both that day. I whipped up a batch of home-made cookies (insert, I picked up a box at Publix), donned a spandex workout number (don’t judge), and headed to Jabin’s to beg any vendor who would listen and who might have a sliver of time to help us. I spoke to several vendors who were super nice (and enjoyed their cookie!) but who simply didn’t have the time—with all the immense demands the boat show brings—to squeeze an entirely new fabrication job in. I am sad to say I left the yard with an empty Tupperware, some cookie crumbs, and no hope. Until …
September 23, 2021: A New Fabricator Is Available
Around 4:00 pm that day my phone dinged with an email. It was from Steve Madden with M Yachts at Jabin’s. His primary fabricator, Don, had unexpectedly had another project fall through which left him with a 5-7 day opening that he could fill with our project … “if we wanted,” Steve wrote. Oh … we wanted! My fingers fumbled typing him back. Of course we wanted! Thank you, Steve! And, thank goodness I’d stopped by that day with cookies.
Don showed up at our boat the next morning, full of stories about how he got into fabricating (by making potato guns that he and his cousins would fire across the creek in Annapolis). He took a long look at the empty gap between our heat exchanger and exhaust tube (that needed to be filled with a custom, stainless riser and elbow) and he set to work, taking measurements and photos.
Don, accessing the engine from our port aft berth
Don was at our boat for about an hour, full of three piping hot cups of coffee I’d fed him, when he said he had everything he needed. I didn’t want to push Don, but I really wanted a rough ETA. “It can be super rough,” I told him. “I just want an idea.”
It starts to get cold in Annapolis (like freezing cold) in late October, early November. For this reason, Phillip and I had been planning to leave Annapolis immediately after the boat show, the week of October 18th to stick with our plan for the winter to “not winterize the boat.” We had friends coming to Annapolis to stay aboard UbiQ and visit during the show Oct. 14th – 18th. (You might remember the amazing Megan and Chris who purchased our Niagara 35!). They were scheduled to come into town on Oct. 11th.
While having a working engine so we could take Megan and Chris out sailing on the Chesapeake would be nice, we knew they would understand if the boat was immovable while they were in town. They’re boat people; they get it. But, we hoped beyond hope it could all come together before they arrived. However, the after was the most important part. While we were super excited to host Megan and Chris and share the new joys of life aboard UbiQ with them, immediately after sending them off, our goal was to start provisioning, weather routing, and planning our passage south down the Chesapeake, around Cape Hatteras, and on down the coast eventually to a jumping off point for the Bahamas. One critical component to that plan was … a running engine.
“About a week,” Don told me, jerking me out of my mental math. I blinked. Swallowed. Blinked again. “Like, one week?” I asked, stupidly. “You’re sure?” even stupider. “Yeah, a week to ten days.” Don assured me he could do it, would do it.
September 24, 2021: New Fabrication Promised in 7-10 Days
I wanted to believe Don. I really did. But, from our experience when you dig into any complicated fabrication, or other big structural, project on a boat, it’s like having work done on your house. Whatever time frame the contractor gives you, multiply it (both the timeframe and the price – ha!) by three. That way you set your expectations realistically and avoid surprise or disappointment. But, it was September 24th. A week to ten days would have us turning the engine over around Oct. 5th … ish. Little gears in my brain that had been cloaked with disappointment and my new-found hatred for UPS started to shake themselves off and turn. For the first time since our “sortation delay” I began to think things might still work out according to plan. Up and running by the show; headed down south the week after. Could it … Don didn’t know it was coming, but I hugged him. Full on. Big, Annie bear hug.
September 28, 2021: The Boat Show Outbound Offers to Bring a Spare
It seemed perhaps some tectonic plate shifted that day. Our boat karma was bubbling up from under murky oil slick UPS had caused. A few days after Don stopped by and claimed to be started on a 7-10 day timeframe in fabricating a brand new riser/elbow for us, Ryan with Collection Yachts gave us a call. Turns out they did not have a spare riser/elbow in the warehouse for our boat, but the new Outbound 46, Hull No. 74, s/v Orion, which was going to be the Outbound 46 in the Annapolis Boat Show was carrying a spare aboard that fit our engine, and the owner, Leo (bless his soul), was willing to sell it to us. Phillip and I joked that we would never trust UPS to send an important boat part again. “No, Sir!” we shouted in jest. We trust a hand-delivery via an Outbound over UPS any day of the week. Orion was set to arrive at Jabin’s on Oct. 6th … with a spare riser/elbow in tow. Could it …
Phillip and I were trying not to get too excited. We hadn’t seen Don since he first stopped by, now, four days prior. I had no idea if he was actually working on our riser/elbow or not. I wanted to believe he was. He seemed super nice. Honest. But, you can’t get to know a guy over a few cups of coffee and some potato gun stories. We also were not 100% sure the spare riser/elbow that was coming via s/v Orion would fit. Ryan with Collection said the engine room layouts on our 2015 model, Hull 58, and the 2021, Hull 74, were the same but until you actually bolt it on … you never know. We floated our own hopes, however. Until this guy showed up.
October 4, 2021: The Newly Fabricated Riser/Elbow is Coming Along
My God, she was beautiful. Shiny stainless. Custom weld joints. An impressive new height, which meant a safer design. Don was really proving himself. Day 9 of his “7-10” day timeframe and he had a piece that was damn-near done. Don did some last-minute measuring at the boat to make some final tweaks on the new piece, and he promised to be back in a couple of days with our completed 316 stainless steel riser/elbow, custom-fabricated for our engine space.
It couldn’t be stopped. Even if I wanted to. I hugged Don again.
October 6, 2021: The Newly Fabricated Riser/Elbow is Complete!
Don and I were getting used to this coffee-cup routine. He showed up again on the morning of October 6th to ensure the final fit of his newly-fabricated riser/elbow. It was a thing of beauty. Don’s unique design, beginning with a sharp bend of the riser moving it immediately aft out of the heat exchanger and up high in a tight 180-degree turn (the elbow) back down to the “water jacket” (that was a new term for me) where Don would add a raw water intake tube for the salt water and hot air exhaust to mix (hence the term, “mixing elbow”) and then exit the boat as hot raw water exhaust. Everything bolted on beautifully. It was a bit hard to believe Don had conjured this glorious piece out of thin air. He took it off one last time to take it back to his shop to spray an anti-corrosive coating on it and wrap it for the install. He kind of had to pry it out of my hands. Having lost one already, I didn’t want to let it go.
Phillip was back in Pensacola during this time trying a case in Bay County. It was a big moment for him, but that left me by myself on the boat to handle all this riser/elbow drama. While we were confident I could install the riser/elbow myself and turn the engine over, we were new to the Yanmar 4JH80. I’d never worked on an engine with a turbo charger and an air cooler, and I’m still not 100% sure exactly what those things are and do. The guilt would totally consume me if I didn’t connect one hose the right way and I blew up the engine (yes, that’s what I imagined could happen). So, we scheduled a mechanic, Dave from Bay Shore Marine who had helped us remove the old riser/elbow back in the yard at Jabin’s (the one that UPS lost!), to come back on October 8th to help with the install and first turn-over of the engine since August 2nd.
It was perfect timing, too, as the new Outbound, Hull 74, Orion, was making his way to the dock at Jabin’s that evening and I was set to meet Marcello with Collection Yachts at the dock the following morning, October 7th, to pick up the riser/elbow spare that Leo had graciously brought us as well as a tour! This called for one thing:
An invite to our former owners, Jim and Ann, to join me so they could tour the newest Outbound 46, too!
October 7, 2021: Outbound 46, Hull 74, s/v Orion, Brings a Spare
She had a deep blue hull. A wooden bulwark. All things I wouldn’t want to maintain, but boy did I love to ogle them.
Our former owners, Jim and Ann, joined me that morning on the short trek over to Jabin’s yard to pick up the spare riser/elbow that Orion’s owner, Leo, had offered to sell us and that Collection Yachts had coordinated for us. Of course, any time you step up to a brand-new boat, there’s one thing you must get. A tour!
Marcello with Collection devoted an entire hour to us that morning offering us an in-depth tour of the newest Outbound 46. I will say it was quite comforting to see not much had changed in the design of the Outbound from Hull 58 (ours, built in 2015) to Hull 74 (Orion, built in 2021). That told us they did it right the first time. The primary differences we saw were owner-elected: a hard versus soft dodger, an AC versus DC generator, the electronics, an in-boom furling mast, the blue hull and wooden bulwark, etc. All of which I think would make for an excellent comparison article (Hull 58 versus 74) in a future blog post.
The Collection Yachts team had also brought the newest build out of Elan Yachts, the GT6, to Annapolis for the boat show and Marcello was generous enough to offer Jim and Ann and I a private tour of that boat as well, which was docked alongside Orion at Jabin’s yard. Talk about a streamlined racing beast. Not a boat I would choose to cruise, but a boat I’m confident would win in an offshore race. She was sleek. I hated to tell Phillip, who was back in Florida wrapping his jury trial but—that day—he definitely missed out!
I hugged it like a child. I couldn’t believe our good fortune when Marcello handed over the spare riser/elbow that Leo brought us on Orion.
A side-by-side comparison once I was back aboard Ubiquitous showed two very similar, but in many ways very different design approaches to reach the same end goal. In analyzing the two we decided to go with our newly-fabricated piece as we preferred the higher-rise design and we knew it was constructed out of 316 stainless steel. With the Outbound 46, we were not entirely sure what type of stainless had been used.
October 8, 2021: Our Yanmar Finally Roars to Life!
It was Annie on deck. I met with Dave from Bay Shore Marine early in the morning, who quickly became our “go to” mechanic that summer, to help install the newly-fabricated riser/elbow and turn our engine over for the first time since August 2nd. That was two months too long ago! Although our fabricator, Don, had mocked up the install during his fabrication process, having had a newly-fabricated piece not fit (by centimeters only!) last time, I was a bit nervous about the install and anxious to see everything bolted and clamped back tightly. Thankfully, it was a perfect fit. I can’t thank Don and his potato-gun skills enough. Our new riser/elbow is a thing of meticulous beauty.
Once all the hoses were wedged on, all the clamps tightened, the sea cock open (I will never forget that again), and the oil checked, it was time. Time to turn our badass 80-hp engine over. This was it. Go, Engine Annie Go!
I can’t tell you what a relief that was. Was it just an engine part? Maybe. Or was it our cruising plans for the season, on our new boat that we’d spent all year planning, saving, and prepping for? More likely. Just a few short weeks prior we had lost both the old and (first) newly-fabricated riser/elbow to a UPS “sortation delay.” Now, after some cursing, crying, and cookies, we ended up with a newly-fabricated, better-than-before riser/elbow, a running engine, and a spare!? While I never cease to forget in the moment—when it seems all signs are telling you your luck surely has turned south—with hindsight I’m always reminded that maybe it was just rearing back for a massive turn in the right direction. Like a crow-hop before landing that nice big punch. Oftentimes when things seem to not be working out at all the way you planned, they may just be gearing up to work out even better in a new direction. Never forget that. Keep the faith!
Next up, we’ve got the new Niagara owners coming for a visit, all the Annapolis boat show fun, and prep for our voyage south down the Chesapeake, out at Norfolk, and around Cape Hatteras—all new terrain for us on our new Outbound 46. Now that we were … you know … able to get outbound. Boats. Always an adventure. Stay tuned.
The telling of this tale. Where to begin? This was quite possibly one of the most frustrating boat projects Phillip and I have ever taken on. And, this comes from a couple who has re-rigged their boat (switching from rod rigging to wire) and replaced the portlights (which was way worse than the rigging) …
While those projects were infuriating at times, I don’t think they came with quite as many punches to the gut. Not quite the emotional roller coaster that this one launched us on. Followers, it’s time to share. I give you …
Our Riser/Elbow Saga (Part 1): Oops … UPS Did It Again!
August, 2021:
B.O.A.T. “Broke Or About To” I think the saying goes. This applies equally to new boats, as well as old … IF … you don’t keep up with the maintenance. (And sometimes even when you do. It is a boat, right?). The same was true with our Outbound 46. A 2015, it had only been built six years prior, but it still had several maintenance issues we were aware of going in. Minor things that were openly discussed during our purchase negotiations, but still items we needed to deal with and most of which our former owner, Jim, even offered to help us with over the summer. Jim was truly top notch in that regard. We got a heck of a draw with our former owner. A few of the items required we haul the boat to tackle, so we scheduled a haul-out at Bert Jabin Yacht Yard (known locally as “Jabin’s”) in Annapolis August 2, 2021. And, for us as I’m sure it is the same with many cruisers, once you decide to haul the boat to do “a few things,” you’ve just given the proverbial mouse a cookie. The list grew. These were our main items:
8.2.21 – 8.13.21 SHIPYARD LIST
Rebuild the Auto Prop (one blade was sticking a bit, not spinning quite as freely)
Repair the Speedo valve (to stop the geyser it created when taking out the transducer)
Bottom job, buff, and spruce up boot stripe and hull
Unseize manual bilge pump seacock in port lazarette
Replace Spurs (crab pod) cutter on prop
Replace prop anode
Replace (or clean out) the galley drain hose (that was occasionally clogging)
Repair/rebuild the Yanmar riser and elbow
During our survey/sea-trial in Annapolis in March, 2021, both our surveyor, Robert (“Bobby”) Noyce, and Steve D’Antonio, who we hired to conduct a pre-purchase inspection (highly recommended), both found the seizing wire on the wrap around our riser/elbow on our 4JH80 Yanmar engine was rusted and needed to be removed and inspected to determine whether the elbow was leaking and needed to be replaced.
Excerpt from Robert Noyce’s Survey for Ubiquitous
Yanmar recommends you replace the riser/elbow on their 4JH80 every 500 hours or two years (whichever comes sooner), which did seem pretty extreme. But, in an effort to be prudent boat owners, Phillip and I pulled the riser/elbow on our Yanmar when we were hauled out so we could inspect it, determine if it was corroded or leaking, and, if so, have a new one fabricated by a skilled marine fabricator who came highly recommended to us through the Outbound community.
August 3, 2021 – We Haul and Send the Old Elbowto the Fabricator
Say cheers to Jim and Ann watching the haulout!
Once removed, we found the riser/elbow wrap was highly corroded and indicated a likely leak at the weld where the tubes were joined.
We sent the old, corroded elbow to a skilled fabricator in Norfolk, VA for inspection and, we presumed, necessary fabrication of a new riser/elbow we could install on the boat to have her running good as new. Our fabricator advised the turn-around on a newly fabricated riser/elbow would likely run a week or two so we were hopeful we could get the new one back and slapped on the boat before our splash date of August 13, 2021. [Insert fingers crossed emoji here].
While he worked, we had plenty of other projects to distract us:
Rebuilding of the Auto Prop (with exceptional help from Roderick at King Propulsion and Jim in his Severn House Boatworks workshop! : )
Re-painting the bottom, buffing out our hull, fixing our Speedo valve, unseizing our bilge pump seacock, installing our prop cutter, and a dozen other little things by Greg with Annapolis Boat Service.
Look at that shiny UbiQ hull!
I will say the one thing I did conquer myself was unclogging the galley drain hose. Turns out it was just clogged with oil and gunk so we didn’t have to snake a new hose in. Whew!
August 13, 2021 – We Splash Back Engineless
Unfortunately, our fabricator—being in very high demand in Norfolk—had a client emergency come up in August that he had to devote his time to and he wasn’t able to turn our newly-fabricated elbow/riser around in two weeks as we had hoped. That was an impressive prospect to begin with, so Phillip and I weren’t too disheartened. He did send us some fun pictures of the progress he was making in the interim which was exciting. The new riser/elbow sure was shiny!
Not wanting to spend more costly days on the hard waiting for a riser/elbow that wasn’t critical for the splash, we decided to drop the boat without a working engine and have the team at Jabin’s tow us safely back to our slip, which was just across the way in Back Creek. They were exceptional, too, in their white-gloved, ginger delivery of our boat safely into her slip. Can’t say enough good things about Roddy, Nacho, and all the guys there.
September 10, 2021 – We Receive the New and Old Elbows Back from Our Fabricator
What a day! After a month not running, sitting in her slip, our beautiful new Outbound was finally going to be turned over, revved up, and ready for the races. We even had a fun raft-up planned with our former owners, Jim and Ann, who were sailing a friend’s Beneteau at the time, Moltobene, and owners of another outbound (Hull No. 7, Serendipitous), Peter and Patty, out at Shaw Bay on the east side of the Chesapeake. I first introduced these fabulous new friends—Jim, Ann, Peter, and Patty in our Fourth of July blog. The raft-up was going to be the perfect way to celebrate our hard work on the hard and our newly commissioned riser/elbow. Everything was falling right into place until … it wasn’t.
When we tried to install the newly-fabricated riser/elbow, with the help of David from Bay Shore Marine/Diversified, also at Jabin’s, it was just a smidge off. A smidge!? Unfortunately, the work space in our old engine room on our Niagara 35 really puts our new engine room to shame. Where we used to have pretty decent 360-degree access to our Westerbeke (I could literally sit crossed-legged behind the engine and work), on the Outbound … well. It’s super tight quarters, likely a computer designed space, where every component on the engine fits within millimeters of space.
Engine room access on the new boat is much tighter
And, the riser/elbow on the Yanmar in our Outbound is not one you can just order online from Yanmar. It’s custom fabricated to fit in our computer-generated tight engine room. And, without being able to lay his hands on the space, using only our old riser/elbow as a guide, our fabricator got it within centimeters. But, the angle of the downward tube (that’s what Annie called it) was just a little tight and would not allow the air handler to bolt back on the engine. David and Phillip wrangled and wrestled and tried to make it work but we had to face the bad news. Our weekend raft-up on UbiQ was a bust. At least we thought that was the extent of our bad news.
We marked the spot where the new riser/elbow needed to be bent just slightly and shipped it back (from Annapolis) to our fabricator (in Norfolk) overnight on September 10th. Feeling terrible, although he shouldn’t have—our fabricator had graciously offered his entire weekend to fix the problem, bend the new riser/elbow, and ship it back to us, overnight as well, on Monday. He was exceptionally devoted to us on this project.
September 10, 2021: We Ship the Old and New Elbows Back to Our Fabricator for Modification
Everything went remarkably smoothly. (Especially considering we were still able to join the raft-up, albeit not rafted on our boat, but Peter and Patty were super gracious to invite us to join them aboard Serendipitous for the weekend out at Shaw Bay with Moltobene, and we had a blast!)
Our fabricator called us on Saturday morning to let us know the new and old riser/elbows had arrived at his shop in Norfolk, VA and he set immediately to work. He was able to bend the new riser/elbow to more closely match the old one and was prepared on Sunday evening to ship them both back to us first thing on Monday when UPS opened. So, it seemed like the “slight bend” issue was just a minor setback. “Just a weekend. No big deal,” Phillip and I said, remaining cheerful. Little did we know …
September 13, 2021: Our Fabricator Ships the Old and New(ly Bent) Elbows Back to Us
September 14, 2021, Phillip and I are waiting eagerly to hear from our local UPS location in Annapolis that a package had arrived at our box. The newly bent riser/elbow was scheduled to arrive via overnight shipping on the 14th, and we were eager to see her fit beautifully so we could finally turn the engine over—snow six weeks after we had removed the old riser/elbow—and, hopefully, just in time for our planned offshore cruise. One of the primary reasons Phillip and I bought the Outbound was for her offshore performance and we had yet to even take her out of Chesapeake Bay since we got her. For this reason, we had planned to take a little ten-day excursion out into the Atlantic, make a loop, and come back into the C&D Canal for our first offshore shakedown on the boat before—what we were planning at the time—our two-week trip to the Bermudas and the Caribbean for the winter. Our calendars were miraculously cleared for two weeks in the last half of September to do it. All we needed was the riser/elbow back from our fabricator to make it happen.
Nearing late afternoon on September 14th, however, we received no notification from UPS. Not a beep, not a ding on our phones. Nothing. We finally decided to just stop by the store in hopes of finding a big box from our fabricator sitting there waiting for us. When I gave the guy at the desk the tracking number, his first response worried me. “This wasn’t sent overnight. It was sent UPS ground.” That didn’t sound right. Our fabricator had shipped it overnight. He told us he even talked to the supervisor guy at his location to be sure it was sent overnight. He was adamant about it. But, by some weird UPS glitch it had been sent ground, which meant it likely would not arrive for a couple of days. “Just a couple of days. No big deal,” Phillip and I said. We’ll just head offshore a little later than we had planned. Little did we know …
September 14-18, 2021: The Package Suffers a “Sortation Delay”
That’s what the UPS tracking site told us. We had already called the UPS folks probably 10 times by now, trying to figure out what the status of the package was and we were told, time and again, “By 10 am tomorrow the website will show the newest information. We can’t tell you anything before that time.” Well, 10am came, and the “new information” was the package had suffered a “sortation delay.” No one could really tell us what that meant. Other than, the package was somewhere (either on a truck or in a building somewhere, they would not tell us where) between Richmond and Norfolk, VA, and that it could not be properly sorted to be sent to Annapolis.
This “sortation delay” continued to show day after day after day on the UPS tracking website. Phillip and I emailed. We called. We waited on hold. We shouted to “SPEAK TO A HUMAN!” We both knew our tracking number by heart. We recited it in our sleep. After all this trouble, I should have had it tattooed on my arm. (Yes, I can still recite it to this day – I did not have to look this up: K2519996757). To say UPS was sympathetic would be a stretch. We begged to speak to supervisors. We told them each day our package was delayed it cost us to stay in a hotel or AirBnB (as we could not stay aboard the boat where she was docked at the time, so each day we could not leave the dock and live aboard cost us lodging). We told UPS it was a custom part that could not be replaced. We implored and pleaded and tried not to shout (to the people – the robots got earfuls). We were in UPS purgatory, or some version of shipping hell.
I begged the UPS people to just tell me where, physically, the package was. Norfolk was just a few hours’ drive from Annapolis. I would have been more than thrilled to rent a car and haul my happy ass over there to pick it up, without a complaint even. But, I guess UPS has been bombarded before by angry customers. They had wised up and would not divulge the location of the package, no matter how many times I asked, begged, cried.
September 19, 2021: UPS Assigns an Investigation Team
Phillip and I were excited, at first. An investigation team. Like trackers. They were going to find our box. “It’s not like it’s a little envelope,” one of our good friends said who was following our tragic tale in real time. “It wouldn’t just slip between the seats.” And, he was right (nod to you, Stephen). This was like a 2- by 3-foot box! It weighed 15 pounds! And it was just sitting somewhere. Suffering a “sortation delay.” All the while, mine and Phillip’s plan to go offshore was melting away like a dream when you wake up and can’t recall the details. We knew that wasn’t happening anymore. UPS had **cked us on that one. But, at least we had an investigation team! They were going to find it. “It’ll just come two weeks later. No big deal,” we told ourselves.
But, on day two of UPS’s alleged “investigation,” during one of my ten daily calls to UPS—“Tracking number K2519996757” I said strictly from memory—the gal (likely working in a cubicle somewhere overseas) said something that slapped me in the face. “After the investigation, they’ll send you a form and you can submit a claim.” Send me a form? A claim? But I need my package? There was something in the way she had said “after the investigation.” All of a sudden it sounded like a formality. Just a box to be checked. “An investigation.” Even though I’d spent another 20 minutes of waiting and shouting “SPEAK TO A HUMAN,” just to reach her, I hung up. For some reason, I just knew then that it was over. They weren’t really looking for our package. What had I been thinking? Investigation … Pssh! It was laughable. Somewhere deep in a little dark crevice of my heart I just knew …
September 22, 2021: UPS LOST OUR PACKAGE
And this package did not contain just the new riser that we had fabricated. It contained the old one, too. The only piece of metal we had in the world at the time that actually fit in the weird, quirky space that made our engine run. We had lost both in one foul blow from UPS. Lost. I still couldn’t half believe it. How do you seriously lose a big package like that? Just lose it!?
Now, Phillip and I just had a gaping hole in our engine room, one from the heat exchanger to the exhaust hose that ran out the back where a custom riser/elbow was supposed to fit. All we had was empty air, no template to work from, and a shallow one-sentence email from UPS advising us they had lost our package and that we could file a claim for the “cost of the item lost.” The cost?! We were livid. Money couldn’t fill the hole in our engine room and make the Yanmar turn over. It had cost us two weeks of lodging. A lost offshore opportunity. Maybe even …
It was then that the paralyzing thought struck us …
September, 2021: Winter Is Coming and Our Boat Isn’t Going Anywhere
The thought of our new boat, our beautiful offshore champion, our island-bound luxury home, sitting in freezing Annapolis for the winter was just … sickening. Phillip and I needed solutions. Hell, we needed a miracle. We asked our fabricator if he could make a new one from scratch. “I’m sorry, I’m having cataract surgery,” he told us. Of course you are! We called Collection Yachts (who now owns Outbound Yachts) to see if they could ship us a replacement from the yard in China, where our boat was built. “The yard is closed for a week. It’s Chinese holiday.” Of course it is! We called and begged multiple marine vendors in Annapolis. “It’s boat show time. We’re booked for months,” they scoffed. Of course you are! It was getting laughable at this point. Except there wasn’t anything funny about the thought of our new badass boat getting hauled back out and sitting sadly up on jacks, wrapped and frigid, for months.That’s when I got desperate.
It was time to run around with cookies.
Stay tuned to find out how this riser/elbow saga wraps! (Teaser, there may be a brand new Outbound involved … just sayin … ).
