The Manic Move

Colin

Julie and I bought an Oyster SJ 36 18months earlier from West Wales. The yacht was brought by road to Corus Ebbw Vale where a friend of mine had a yard to store the yacht while it undertook a small refit. Ha ha.
On the 10th of Jan 2004 I was told that I had to move the yacht. I only had six weeks to organise it because there was a pipe being laid on the 1st of March right where the yacht was laid up. Sods Law. It was either move it 20ft or move it out. I decided to move it to the nearest place where it would be close to launching, so the manic move was on!!
I contacted Paul at Sea Fix haulage to move the yacht somewhere, at this time not known. Paul said he had to have a road route to book a date, and the nearest slot he had was (wait for it) the weekend of the 28th and 29th Feb. Come high or low water, the move would have to be on these dates but it was cutting it a bit fine. I spoke to John Palmer, but through no fault of Johns, the hard standing was not ready for this size of yacht. The second problem was that my other yacht Hidden Secret was on the moorings, so launching the Oyster was out of the question. CYC members are restricted to one boat only.
Julie contacted Barry Yacht Club, but I didn't hold much hope. We were now one week away from the 1st of March and I was pulling my hair out. Only one problem, I aint got no hair. Well not on top anyway. I made the call, as one must do as one is told. Would you believe it, my wife Julie was right again. Peter Derbyshire answered saying I think there's a good possibility that we can help. I will need to ring Jeff Sharp the commodore of BYC. Within 5 minutes Jeff rang, and after a bit of chat he said "We will only be to pleased to help you as much as we can. You do what you need to do and leave the rest to us. Just keep me posted the morning you leave Ebbw Vale". I was so impressed and thankful with all who helped from BYC.
Saturday 28th. Its snowing, and the roads are bad. We postponed the crane until Sunday and as this so happens it was not a bad thing because when Paul arrived with the low-loader, he said the cradle the yacht was sitting on in Corus was not adequate to be used for travelling. Fortunately, at CYC I had the cradle from Hidden Secret. On Saturday I telephoned Peter Barry and he said it would be OK to pick it up. He kindly organised with Trevor Edwards to lift it on to the back of the lorry with the JCB. I was immensely grateful to them both.
Sunday 29th. Dave Howell (GEM), a good friend of mine from CYC, kindly offered to help with the move. We managed to load the yacht to the low-loader by 11am. Problem! It was now 3pm and we had to be at BYC by 5pm. At 3.10pm the Police arrived and we made Barry by 5.15pm. The yacht was chocked and in its cradle by 6pm. Game over!