Moving Kialoa

April 2002

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Arranging for the transport
I called several yacht transport companies and finally settled on Joule Yacht Transport as they had experience with wooden boats. The yard was 2 hours from my house, about 80 miles, not bad. I made several trips to the yard, picked up the engine, had the masts stepped and went to the yard to remove the rigging from the masts as the mast racks will force the rigging wire into the spruce masts leaving an impression when on the truck.

The Problem
So , now here's the problem . I have this building just long enough for the boat but there is neither the room or clearance to drive the boat into the building on the truck then lift it off. The building would have to come down and be rebuilt once the boat was in place. Looking at the structure with a good friend of mine we came up with the idea of lifting the building up out of the way, placing the boat on blocking and lowering the building back over the boat. No kidding , we really thought this made sense. The building was never meant to be lifted so we constructed reinforcing members, sort of a lifting brace for the building. Should work, right?

All is Ready?
The day arrived April 26th , perfectly orchestrated, the truck was to be at the yard at 9:00 am. The yard was ready with the travel lift, the crane was due at my place at 11:00. The trip from the yard should take about 2 hours giving us enough time to move the building.

Recent evidence suggests that the speed of light once thought to be a constant may in fact be changing. Researchers in Australia have conducted experiments showing that light is slowing down. This leaves, to the best of my knowledge, the physical universe with but one remaining constant and that is "Murphy's law".

Lifting the Masts
The first call came in around 8:30 from the truck driver saying he would be a little late due to traffic and how was I planning to lift the masts to the truck ? I called the yard and they informed me that, no, they couldn't lift the masts from the ground to the truck but thought the mechanics shop could. I called the mechanic and sure enough they would be at the ready with their forklift (what was your credit card number again?). The truck left the marina with Kialoa around 11:30.

Lifting the Building
The crane took 3 tries to get in the driveway and for the first hour the guy shook his head so much he reminded me of one of those dogs people put in the back window of their cars. Finally two of us had the building strapped at the precisely engineered location and gave the signal to lift. It was like we really knew what we were doing it went straight up stayed flat, and came to rest perfectly. The crane operator stopped shaking his head. Now all we had to do was wait for the boat.

Kialoa Arrives At Her New Home
The second phone call came at about 1:30 informing us that the truck was about 30 minutes away and verifying the directions. Around 2:30 we heard a tractor coming down the street and there it was, looking very out of place, a 50 ft trailer with a 45 foot wooden boat strapped to it in the middle of somewhat suburban New Jersey.

Low Trailer Boat trailers are very low to the ground and have a slot in the middle to allow the keel of a sailboat to be carried as low as possible. In attempting to make the swing into our driveway the tractor swung out onto the property across the street which unfortunately had somewhat of a rise to it causing the low trailer to get hung up. I took this to be a somewhat ominous sign. Here I was, the first time I move my boat and its hard aground on our neighbors front lawn. The driver was great and with some maneuvering and some remark having to do with "damn sailboat guys", managed to kedge off the lawn and swing into the driveway.

The next obstacle turned out to be a somewhat tricky turn between the big ash in the backyard and my wife's peonies. The driver got out after being assailed by my wife screaming " I don't care what you have to do etc…" He said to me "what should I do?" I of course replied, out of earshot of my wife, if you have to, you have to. Sure, he said, what do you care she's going to yell at me. Well he made the turn flora intact and after some back and forth managed to get the boat close enough to the crane.

Lifting Kialoa
We removed the masts using the straps from the crane and then strapped the boat. It is truly an odd sight seeing about 26,000 lbs of boat hanging in the air. The crane operator really knew what he was doing , the boat never swung it just slowly moved over its blocking.

Having obtained the plans from the Alden design office we had arranged the blocking (based on the construction drawing) such that the ballast keel would be blocked up about 6-8 inches and that the blocking would not be in way of the keel bolts. We also took the time to make the blocking height such that she would sit level on her waterlines.
The crane operator put her right down on her blocks and we set up the jackstands. Almost done.

Replacing the Building
Now,,,,,,That building. Feeling pretty smug after the first lift we thought "piece of cake". Well not exactly. Since we had blocked the boat high and the straps for lifting went under the eves of the building we were concerned that in lowering the building the straps running under might contact the cabin top, which we decided might not be a good thing. So we measured and moaned and finally decided to move the straps outboard of their original location. The straps under the building were actually 2 straps each connected by a shackle to make them each long enough. When we moved the strapping outboard and the building started to lift one of the shackles got hung up in the eves and racked the building.

Building Racks Now to say it "racked the building" is perhaps somewhat of an understatement as the popping and wrenching noises were somewhat dramatic. Sooo…….. Now what. The building hung there suspended in air sort of together,sort of not. It took sometime but we finally decided to go for it and attempt to place this misshapen object around Kialoa. Maybe it will straighten back out when it hits the ground? no? Well to make a long story short it went back over the boat and settled pretty well with the exception of 2 corners which are a bit bent.

Truck left, crane departed, champagne opened. Whew!

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