The Handoff

Little behind in posts. My internet out here is terrible. I have 1LK617C here in my shop and will post some pics over the next few days.....

Wednesday was a bit of a stressful day.. Because my crate needs to come up the eastern border of the united states and then across the border I need to pick it up myself to avoid some nasty brokerage fees. I was also a little nervous about letting it sit for a day or so in case it should suffer some of the damage I have seen other crates experience.

I had used U-ship. Basically a shipper for hire service. I't pretty seamless for the most part and the service holds funds in escrow so you know the shipping company is eager to meet expectations.

The orignal plan was to meet up Wednesday around lunch time. We are about 1 hour from the border and Port Huron has a harbor freight in case of last min needs, pullies, dolly etc. I upgraded trailer size thanks to a good friend and instead of taking the dollies I made I borrowed some from a local towing service that I use.

I had a cheap winch (2000lbs) so I welded it to a receiver extension to drag the crate over to my trailer.....

Work smarter, not harder as they say..

The winch, trailer and dollies ended up working perfectly....

Strapping the dollies to the crate, supporting the aft end with a snowmobile dolly and parking gate to gate you would think I sat back and thought this through.

I DID think this through after staring at my 5X10 galvanized TSC trailer for a few nights thinking this shit is not going to work. It would have been hanging over at least 4' with a single axel and and extremely poor suspension. I have had stuff bounce out before after hitting a bump in the road... Not interested in premature flight.

The Uship driver was having some truck problems and could not go over 50mph so he ended up being a few hours (5) later than I originally planned. Getting over the border was a snap (after forking over some mad money to the Liberals) and it was literally only 50 min to my shop door.

I have a New Holland L213 skid steer with some attachments and had it ready to unload and get the 16X4X4 beast into my nice toasty shop.

The evening before I had a bit of misfortune. A bird (starling) got into the shop and in the good nature of protecting all creatures great and small (especially those aloft) I opened the second bay door to let him out. Once he was free and looking for a way back in I realized the cable slipped off a spool and my door was stuck open...

An open bay door at -10 degrees Celsius is kind of nasty so I ended up using my Kubota BX25 to let the door down (once I walked it down with a 2X6).

Walking around the back of my Kubota I was excited to see I have developed a bad hydraulic oil leak and it looks like a bitch to fix....

I need to do some work to the deck wheels and grass feeder needs replacing so I think this is a spring project... SeaRey on the mind...

That's my wonderful dad helping me with the crate in the first bay. Dollies off to be returned and the lights to be turned out till tomorrow.

I ended up opening the aft 4X8 piece of plywood to look inside and touch the hull. I still remember the day I unpacked my first computer. It was a Commodore Vic 20. I can still smell the styrofoam packing. Opening the crate brought me back to that moment of wonder. All of the Christmas;s and Birthdays that have passed. I don't get too excited about opening boxes but there sure are some exceptions. I felt like that little boy on Christmas morning all over again.

Made some quickie wheels and support for the bottom of the crate. Getting it over to the other side is going to take a bit of help with our good friend the wheel. My dad says "If it needs to move I put wheels on it right away" Must be why I got the roller skates when I turned 20.

So here it is, I was reminded on the technical SeaRey site to take a picture with the box. Luke deserves to be in it as well, he is probably going to be spending as much time with these parts as I do.