During the entire stretch of our haulout, we only went four times without a 4am alarm. We were beat. I had been making Maryanne promise for weeks that our plan for our first day in the water was to do absolutely nothing. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to resist trying to do 'a few little jobs,' she even upped the ante by insisting we NOT go straight back to the marina. Instead, we would anchor for a couple of nights to make sure there were no stores or parks or pubs to distract us.
Obviously, we couldn't really do nothing. We intended to give it a good try, though. For example, when we first stirred, sans-alarm, and realized it was daylight, instead of yelling, "Aahhh!!" in a rush of adrenaline, and bolting for the power tools, we took deep breaths and made a point of revisiting the whole getting out of bed thing again in another hour or so.
When we did finally emerge and move all the way to the cabin settee, it was a dangerous time. In each of our heads were our own personal lists of haulout remainders. Now we had hours of unstructured time before us.
Maryanne probably had the most compelling item: Figure out how much the haulout cost.
I know it may seem unfathomable, but we really have no idea the full total we have just spent. We know it's definitely not zero. It's certainly in the thousands, and I have a strong suspicion it is way more than Maryanne and I have ever made in any given fifty-six-day period, but the margin of error there is still pretty huge. We're normally much more on top of our finances, but haulouts are one of those, 'throw the book out the window' situations. Bibliographical defenestration, if you like.
There are lots of reasons for this. Unless you're only out of the water for a week or so, Norsand does not send you THE bill. Instead, you get A bill once a month. You're busy, so you pay it and move on with your work. By the time the next one comes, memory of the last one is behind a hundred other things that have happened since then. It's buried in one of our emails somewhere... We've been too busy trying to get back in the water to collect them all in one place and add them up. Also, we've spent a lot of money outside the yard at various contractors, machine shops, and especially hardware stores. Every now and then, one of them will have a credit card machine that is down. We'll hand over a pocketful of cash and get back a pocketful of change that we will forget about until we find it in the dryer with a receipt for, I don't know, (squinting) something... {Maryanne:There is spending leading up to the haul out in preparatino, and once in the yard in all directions, on line, quick run to the store for parts/tools, various tradespeople, etc - I've been throwing receipts into a bag to deal with later and making sure there is enough in the bank to pay the credit card bill, but I'd not totalled it all up. Whatever the answer, the New Zealand economy has done well from our visit!}
This leaves us with what I think of as a typical nineteen-year-old's accounting method: Write a check and see if it bounces. If it doesn't, were good!
So far, we seem to have not run out of money, but to be honest, that is only hearsay at this point. Maryanne, sitting in front of her computer, really wanted to find out for sure. I could practically see her thoughts as her cursor hand acted like it was being fought over by two invisible, competing entities. Instead, she decided to cue up a movie. That's more like it!
When that was done, we again fought off our boatyard conditioning to get to work and had a game of dominoes (she won, of course). After that, it was another forced movie, then dinner, and then back to that nice, comfy bed for a bout of trying to stay up until it at least looks like it's trying to get dark outside. I don't remember if we made it or not.
Anchorage location (anchored in the Hatea River) >> On google maps
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