it doesn't always go like you imagine

Next step, albeit very much delayed, in the Sea Mule hull section number 4's journey is to get it back down the road. It as spent all Winter into Spring listing on the roadside halfway up my mountain after I had to dump in off my injured Mack truck.

The task now is to pull the leaning hull section back upright and then drag it down the road back to its starting point.

I asked my friend, Hugh, to come be driver while I was the "outside eyes" monitoring things. Hugh has many years in the seat of a Mack plowing snow for Okanogan Highway Department. Besides, he hasn't had the experience of helping me in my Sea Mule-often-turned dramas. Fresh blood, as it were.

I drove the truck down thru the switchbacks--three point turns all--and got the truck positioned at a right angle to the boat hull. It was listing at a bit more than a 45 degrees and I imagined that it wouldn't take much of a pull to right it. Imagined.

It required so much pull that, instead of pulling the hull upright, it just spun the back tires on the dump truck. No matter what position, no matter how hard we tried.

Funny how that goes. Something you think aughta work...doesn't. Something that looks easy...isn't. Something you think will turn out a certain way...turns out different. And half the time, at least, that's a good thing.

Next strategy: We talked over loading the Mack with gravel, say 5 yards, to get some more weight on the the back end, but that would require my digging up and loading that much rock. Instead, what I am going to do is bring down Alice, my road grader (Allis Chalmers). She has 4 powered wheels, thru the tandem chain boxes and lots of weight--26,000 lbs--to keep her footing. That should pull the boat hull back upright....