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I recently purchased a Cal 31 from my father, who has owned it for over a decade, has bought a larger boat, and made me a truly awesome deal (I think!).
I found the process of shipping my boat from Lake Erie (Meinke Marina in Curtis, OH, between Toledo and Sandusky) to Yorktown, Virginia, to be a rather intimidating process. I went through 3 different shippers before settling on the shipper who moved me. I want to add a bit of detail on how this process worked for me.
First, I never considered moving the boat by water. It had been out of the water for 2 years, and while I knew it to be generally in good shape, I didn't want to use a move like that as a shakedown event. Also, I didn't have the time and didn't want to look for someone else to do it.
So I started looking for a boat shipper. Google can be your friend. The first shipper that sounded promising was Sailors Moving Sailors. I think these guys are a quality operation. However, they were not responsive to my emails. I thought that perhaps they were on the road and only checking on weekends and gave them plenty of time to respond but nothing. Eventually I tried texting and got a fairly quick response. I honestly don't know if/when I tried calling, but I do know that email was not good. When I did reach them (via text) we talked about a timeline. The quote was good (in the ballpark of what I was seeing) but they couldn't nail down a date - they were very loose with whether they could fit me between other shipments and I would only know 3-4 days prior to the pickup. This wasn't going to work for me, so I moved on.
More to follow...
I found the process of shipping my boat from Lake Erie (Meinke Marina in Curtis, OH, between Toledo and Sandusky) to Yorktown, Virginia, to be a rather intimidating process. I went through 3 different shippers before settling on the shipper who moved me. I want to add a bit of detail on how this process worked for me.
First, I never considered moving the boat by water. It had been out of the water for 2 years, and while I knew it to be generally in good shape, I didn't want to use a move like that as a shakedown event. Also, I didn't have the time and didn't want to look for someone else to do it.
So I started looking for a boat shipper. Google can be your friend. The first shipper that sounded promising was Sailors Moving Sailors. I think these guys are a quality operation. However, they were not responsive to my emails. I thought that perhaps they were on the road and only checking on weekends and gave them plenty of time to respond but nothing. Eventually I tried texting and got a fairly quick response. I honestly don't know if/when I tried calling, but I do know that email was not good. When I did reach them (via text) we talked about a timeline. The quote was good (in the ballpark of what I was seeing) but they couldn't nail down a date - they were very loose with whether they could fit me between other shipments and I would only know 3-4 days prior to the pickup. This wasn't going to work for me, so I moved on.
More to follow...