As with many things, I found this boat via my eBay automated searches - A Ranger 33 located in San Diego. Everyone knew something that I didn't, as I was the only bidder, but I got it for what I think was a good price of $16,500, sight unseen.
After waiting a week to hear from truckers, the seller of the boat, getting anxious to make room for his replacement boat, got me a good price of $2200 from Wilmington Boat Movers, who would be delivering his new boat. So I flew down to San Diego, rented a cheap car, and saw my new boat for the very first time.
It was not as nice as I'd hoped, but far better than I feared. The seller was very helpful, offering all sorts of low cost extra sails and equipment, and he helped me move the boat from the slip on Shelter Island to the boatyard (on the other side of Shelter Island). The seller had owned 20-some boats in as many years, so he was apparently a trader in boats. His "new" boat was a fire damaged Catalina 36 that he had bought at an insurance auction.
Once in the yard, I handled all the de-rigging and packing. The 90 foot maxi Genuine Risk was in the yard next to me, so I suddenly felt sort of cheap and tawdry.
After a sort-of-expected one day delay, the truck arrived, the boat was loaded, and
she was off to Oregon. The transport truck was a pretty high-tech trailer, actually being able to wet load something without the
deep keel. Since I was in the yard less than 24 hours and did all the work myslef, the the yard bill came to $500, mostly in Travelift cost and crane fees, about half what I was budgeting.
Having left on Friday, the truck headed to Wilmington for the weekend, while I flew back to Medford. The trucker left his home base Sunday morning, spending that night in Redding, then cut over to the coast and came up through the Redwoods. It turns out that Crescent City's Travel-lift was broken, so we diverted to Brookings, where she was quickly offloaded onto jacks on Monday.
I had already decided to drydock for a few days, to give me a chance to fix a hefty ding in the keel. I commuted to Brookings every day that week, spending time fiberglassing the keel ding, painting parts of the mast, replacing the zincs, and puttering about. We re-launched on Thursday and stepped the mast on Friday. Exactly one week from dock to dock - without mishap! The yard bill at this ended up at about $400, this time including Travellift, crane, and the days in the yard.
Although Brookings was our desired port, there's a waiting list for slips, so we sailed to Crescent City after we outstayed our welcome squatting in Brookings and there was a day with neither small craft nor gale warnings.