Subscribe to RSS FeedI've been in this business for 25 seasons now, but handling big, expensive yachts in close quarters still gives me the willies. Last week, we got a call to move a 76' Lazzara motor yacht from West Wind Marina in Newport to the Hinckley yard in Portsmouth for repairs. One of the Lazzara's wheels had broken free from her shaft while she was docking at West Wind, so she needed to get to Hinckley for haul-out and a shaft replacement.
We set up the job for last monday morning and sent myself and Capt. Andy in our two 35', 740hp twin waterjet towboats the Safe/Sea Newport and Safe/Sea Salvor. My initial thought when I saw the scene below was, "Well, this oughta be interesting."
My trepidation about wiggling the Lazzara out of the hole she was in was quickly assuaged after talking with the casualty's crew and the dock staff at West Wind, whom were all consummate professionals. Here's a view of the exit route from the inside of the basin.
Believe me, no one wants to pay for a scratch put into any of these boats. This is when I'm very happy that my towboats are essentially motorized fenders! To extract the Lazzara, we attached Capt. Andy, in the Safe/Sea Newport to the bow of the casualty, and he held a slack hawser as the dock crew of West Wind hand-over-handed the Lazzara out of her slip and got her pointed out of the narrow entrance of the basin. I was in the Safe/Sea Salvor, standing guard duty on the north side of the exit to prevent the Lazzara from being set down onto a megayacht tied up next door at Casey's Marina.
Once she was pointed out the basin exit, Andy provided a gentle tug of forward momentum, and she slid nicely into the spacious waters of Newport Harbor. Well, they certainly seemed spacious at the time! Below is the Lazzara under tow headed out of the harbor past Goat Island.
While Capt. Andy did the towing toward Hinckley, I shot up there to scout out what we had to deal with when we got there. They want her on their big face dock, which was fine, but to get there we had to go through the narrowest part of the marina, which is about 70' wide between a graite pier and steel pilings. The Lazzara is about 25' wide, and with my towboat on the hip, she'd be about 37' feet wide, leaving us about 15' of clearance on either side. However, about 10' of that space was being taken up by the bowsprit of a huge sailing yacht, as you can see in the picture below. So, my plan became to keep the Safe/Sea Newport towing the casualty astern on a hawser, put myself in the Safe/Sea Salvor on the hip, and take her straight past the narrows into the turning basin, where we would have plenty of room (relatively) to turn her and put her against the dock. The Hinckley crew got theur small outboard yard boat underway to help as well.
The plan went off without a hitch, as we ghosted by the sailing yacht and granite pier at about 1.3 knots of forward speed, Capt. Andy proceeded straight to the dock, secured himself and used his hawser as a bow spring that we could work against the bring the Lazzara broadside to the wind and against the dock. Below is the view on our way out of the Hinckley Yard for home, with the Lazzara clearly in view against the dock.
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