Hi there! Gerri here. My husband Randy and I just brought our "new" 1978 VN23 home to North Carolina from Jacksonville, Fla. We pulled her up to the house just 3 hours ago
Miss NOLA was originally in New York, and somehow made her way down to Louisiana, where my sister bought her several years back. She and a friend refurbished her and had her in a marina off Lake Ponchartrain. Miss NOLA made it through Hurricane Katrina there, with just one of her 16 lines snapped after the storm. A log jam of other boats at the edge of her slip kept any other boats or debris from damaging her.
My sister moved to Fla. after the storm, and then went back for her boat. She was towing it along I-10 and hadn't realized the trailer tongue was rusted underneath. She hit a bump and the trailer came loose. It rolled past the truck, leaving a scrape of light blue hull paint on the side. It rolled off the road, hit a ditch, went airborn and hit a tree. The trailer wedged between the trees, and the boat shot off, and busted the bow against some other trees.
The boat was towed out of the woods and brought to Fla., where my sister redid all the fiberglass and repainted her. She's been in the water several times since then, but has been dry docked for the past 2 years.
She's never had an 'official' name, but she will be Miss NOLA as we work on her... because we miss my home town of New Orleans, La. And because my sister's grandson calls her Nola instead of Grandma, and we miss her too
We restored an old Ebbtide fishing boat last year and have been out on the local lakes a bunch. But we're completely new to sailing. We're in our early 40s and know we're in for quite an experience for the next 40 LOL
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