It’s a long way

In a way it was good to have a large enough truck, to comfortably place the boat on. On the other hand it caused some inconvenience. Maneuvering in tight corners was just one of them, and Arnaldo mastered that one skillfully. The other was that the big truck was not allowed to cross the bridge from Niteroi to Rio de Janeiro… Therefore we had to take the long route, around the Guanabara Bay. Instead of 30km, we now had to drive about 100km. Since we had some excess width, and did not prepare the appropriate documentation for that, we were subject to “questioning” by the road police. The excess was little, sure, but, we know how accurate our police can be regarding some issues…

The excess width was actually a surprise to me. I had calculated 80cm for the canoe body, 80 cm on each side for the extrusions, that made 240cm. the truck had 250cm width – so, no problem. Once we rolled the boat out, it seemed to be a tight fit. So I went and measured. Surprisingly the boat had 268cm width? Luiz Fernando explained candidly that he decided to add a couple of centimeters!!! This was no time for discussions. I was glad to have an explanation for the width and hoped that police wouldn’t bother stopping us. Travelling in the baking midday heat, during lunchtime would be a good thing to do. And else form that… great, I now have a wider staybase! I left the workshop with a handshake and a crooked smile.

São Pedro must have watched over our transport. After a very brief sandwich lunch, we hit the road. Luckily all went well. Police was having lunch, or sleeping, or considered it just too hot to bother with us. Arnaldo managed to negotiate all tight corners, potholes, road bumpers and other obstacles and we arrived safely at the Ramos Yacht Club. What a relief! Now all we had to do was to safly unload the boat form the truck. Loading was one thing. We had a coordinated team working under my command. Now the boathandling crew form the club joined the party. And they had had their fill of cachaça already…

By the way: All these nice pictures were taken by Stefano. Thank's to him!