Three of us made this trip, Ronnie, myself, and our son, Ben. And it took all three of us to make it successfully. We finally made it to Florida on Christmas Eve after waiting out a big snowstorm and having wheels fall off the trailer twice. A long strange trip.
Our first plan to visit my brother in Virginia was aborted when, with the refrigerator cleaned out and the heat turned down, we took a last minute look at the weather. The biggest snowstorm to hit the D.C. area in years was headed for northern Virginia. With no place to park the rig and little hope of getting it out before the Spring thaw, we decided to not go there and waited at home for the storm to develop.
It developed and then some. We finally abandoned hope of leaving until 4 days later, after the storm had passed and snow plows had had time to clean up the major roads. Good decision, because we lost a trailer wheel (1 of 4) at the 50 mile mark. It took 4 hours to repair, but the service guy tightened the bearing too much on the spare ( I told him that I thought that it was too tight but figured he knew more than I did). 40 miles later a friendly trucker pointed at our rig. We pulled over to find the bearing smoking and the dust cap blown off spraying grease everywhere. We tried to find a dustcap and regreased the wheel after loosening the bearing one notch, but the cap fell off again. We kept on going to South Jersey to visit an old friend late that night.
The next AM, after finding a source for both a new dustcap and a new tire and rim, we had gone all of 1/2 mile when the spare tire blew up. The blowout also destroyed the hub and blew the wheel off again. This time we rescued the wheel, but needed to call Boat U.S. again for help finding someone who would assist us on-site. Our boat is too tall to safely tow on a flatbed truck without taking wires or part of the boat out. 4 hours later we were back on the road again, totally paranoid about any odd sounds, smells, etc. That would continue for the rest of the trip. We made it past Washington, D.C. and into a badly plowed parking lot, where we proceeded to get 2 of the trailer tires locked around a hidden curb corner, with the truck on shear ice. An hour later, after hot water, shoveling and ultimately jacking up one of the axles we freed the trailer and went to sleep.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. We made up for lost time by driving 650 miles from D.C. to Georgia and then on to the Finish Line, a boat dealer friend of ours in Stuart, FL, where we unhitched the boat and continued to Ronnie's mom's house. A great Chinese Christmas dinner with relatives we haven't seen for a while, and we are now looking at launching the boat soon in Ft. Lauderdale to try to catch a weather window that might be appearing in about 3-4 days. Tune in about a week - hopefully for less eventful news.
