Our passerelle, equal parts aggravation and creation

Boats – they always need something.
Sometimes they need something they never had to begin with.

Enter stage left, the passerelle.  Don’t know what a passerelle is?
Neither did we until we chartered a catamaran in Greece.
Granted the boats in Europe already come with one but in a nutshell, they get you on and off the boat.

You see in the Med the boats are docked stern to (backed in).
They can’t get close enough to the dock to comfortably deposit people so in comes the passerelle.
Call it a gang plank, footbridge, ramp, it gets the job done so you don’t have to do a running start to launch yourself onto the dock.

The boat we are on now is a Leopard 47 and did not have one of these passerelle’s as it’s previous playground was the Caribbean.
The Caribbean doesn’t do a lot of the stern to docking, that’s mostly a Euro thing.

Stevo likes to create things not just buy them and install.
We needed a passerelle and the wheels started turning.
This involved recon at the local Home Depot like stores here in Valencia.

These look and feel like Home Depot but have their own identities.
In fact the Brico-Mart here could easily pass for HD.  Who knows, maybe they are all one company?

This doesn’t stop me from wanting to grab a large wheel off the wall behind me and knock myself out every time we go into one of these places.

Yes, that’s real pain in those eyes people.
Little known fact:  men turn into the equivalent of little old ladies when placed in a large hardware environment.

They stroll through EVERY aisle comparing, picking up, and putting down every doo dad they sell that THEY WEREN’T LOOKING FOR IN THE FIRST PLACE!

I have TRIED SO HARD to be interested in what he’s looking at.
Me:  hey what’s that for?
Stevo:  oh it’s a doohickey for a nut bearing (or whatever)…
Me:  that’s cool (it’s not)
Still me:  Is that what’s on your list?
Stevo:  no, it’s just really interesting because the blah blah blah and we don’t have that at home

This goes on for more than an hour, I kid you not.
Sometimes I even try to wait him out and see just HOW LONG we have to spend here in hardware hell.
But apparently 1 1/2 hours is my tipping point and I start becoming the cheerleader:
‘Alrighty what’s left on the list, let’s keep this going, you can do this, the days getting away from us LET”S GO!’
Pretty sure I would still be standing there right now if my cheerleader didn’t kick in.
Thank you cheerleader voice.

Just out of curiosity WHY is it exactly that when we make a plan to go to IKEA, I get read the riot act IN THE PARKING LOT as to how long we are going to spend in there and EXACTLY what we are there for?
I also love the ‘walk faster so she will try to catch up with me and I can get out of here faster’.
Which I’m onto and am happy to say absolutely DOES NOT WORK.
Same couples issues, different country…apparently.

After mucho recon Stevo had put a plan together for the passerelle.
Most of the parts to the passerelle were manageable, caster wheels, bolts, steel plate etc…

Some were not.
For the record I would just like to mention that our rental car is a Fiat 500.
It’s a shiny blue clown car.

These are the pieces of the passerelle that didn’t really fit.
A 16 ft extendible ladder and four 8ft 1×6 pieces of grooved decking material.

It’s never easy is it?

Here’s what’s running through my head:
I hope I can get my seatbelt so if the car bursts at the seams I won’t fall out.
Why are we here on the busiest day of the week in a crowded parking lot with cops set up looking for … maybe ladders and boards hanging way out the back of an open clown car?
But thats just me.
Stevo’s like:  Oh, I forgot something, stay here I’ll be right back.
Oh, ok I’ll just sit here in the parking lot while people do slow drive by’s laughing and pointing, I am positive I’m on Instagram somewhere.
Wait – better idea.  I’ll get out and laugh and point and pretend I’m not actually with that car.

We made it out of the parking lot and didn’t dump the whole load on the highway (including me) so THAT was exciting.

Here’s the thing with Stevo, once he gets a plan in his head there’s no stopping him.
He grinded, sawed, bored holes.
Crawled into the sugar scoop and hung upside down in the dark to fasten the sucker to the boat.

And here it is:

Our new passerelle.

All secured and ready to go.

We figure we saved an undetermined amount of money on an item that would have had to be custom made by doing it ourselves.
Standard passerelles only run about 9 ft, ours extends 14 ft.
Our sugar scoops are low so we need the extra lift.

It was a joint effort equal parts aggravation and creation.
That’s how we roll!