Getting her home, and the one date you cannot argue with

Every other date in this business is a preference. The spring run north has a real deadline behind it, it is set by your insurer rather than by you, and it is the reason the northbound window books tighter than the southbound one.

Going south in the fall, if you slip a fortnight, you have a colder trip and a shorter day. Coming north in the spring, if you slip a fortnight, you can find your boat sitting in Florida on the wrong side of a clause in your own policy. That is a different kind of problem, and it is not one the yard or the driver can fix for you.

What 1 June actually is, and what it is not

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November. That is a NOAA definition of when storms form, and on its own it has no legal effect on anybody.

What gives it teeth is your policy. A great many boat policies carry a named-storm or hurricane provision, and those provisions are written around that season. The shapes they take vary, and the variation is the whole point:

• A navigational limit with a date on it. The boat is covered south of a stated latitude only outside the season, so after a date she is simply not insured where she is sitting.
• A separate, much larger deductible for named-storm damage, which applies inside the season whatever else the policy says.
• A named-storm plan requirement: cover continues, but only if you have an agreed written plan for hauling or securing her, and only if you follow it.
• Nothing at all. Some policies have no such provision, and some owners keep boats in Florida all summer quite deliberately and insure accordingly.

So the honest answer to "do I have to be out by 1 June" is that only your policy knows. Ask your underwriter for three things in writing: whether there is a named-storm or hurricane provision, the exact date and latitude it turns on, and what changes when it does. Those three answers give you your real deadline, which may be earlier than 1 June, later, or absent.

Do this in January, not in May. If the answer turns out to be a latitude you have to be north of, you are no longer booking a convenient trip, you are booking against a date, and every other owner with the same clause is booking against the same one.

The fall run is spread out. The spring run is a funnel.

Southbound traffic spreads across October and November because the thing pushing it is the weather turning, and the weather turns gradually. Owners leave when their season ends, and their seasons end at different times.

Northbound traffic does not spread, because the thing pulling it is a date on a document. Everybody with a hurricane clause is aiming at the same few weeks before it, and the yards they are aiming at are all opening for the season at the same time. The result is a narrower window with more boats in it, which is why the booking advice for spring is the end of February while the fall is the end of August.

There is one piece of good news in the timing. A wide load may only travel in daylight, and May has nearly fifteen hours of it against about eleven in early November. The same run that takes three days southbound in the fall often takes two northbound in the spring, which takes a driver day out of the cost. The haul planner works it out from the actual sunrise and sunset along the corridor on your dates rather than from a flat number.

Which direction is the cheap one, and when

This is the part most owners never think about, and it is worth real money on a quote.

A carrier working this corridor has a loaded direction and an empty one, and it flips with the season. In the fall the loaded direction is south, so they drive home north empty. In the spring it reverses: the loaded direction is north, and the empty run is back down.

Which means two things. If you are moving north in the spring or south in the fall, you are going the way everybody else is going, you are competing for the same slots, and nobody is doing you a favour on price. But if you need a boat moved south in the spring or north in the fall, you are the load that fills an otherwise empty leg, and you should say so when you ask. That is the single strongest thing you can put in an enquiry, and it is why a boat each way on one trailer gets a better number than either leg alone.

If anything is coming back the other way, say so when you leave the move. It goes to carriers as part of the job rather than as an afterthought. Leave the move.

Arriving is its own problem, state by state

Southbound, the hard part is usually getting her out of a crowded Northeast yard. Northbound, the hard part is arriving into one that is opening for the season with everybody else's boat landing the same fortnight. The line items are the same in both directions, so the state cost guides apply either way; what changes is what is waiting at the top.

• Connecticut. A short run off I-95 to most of the Sound, and the yards are close to the road. Book the lift before the driver, because a travel lift in the last week of April has a queue behind it. The line items.
• New York. If she is going to Long Island, the parkways are closed to commercial traffic and a wide load's route is fixed by the permit. The last forty miles decide the job and the premium comes from them. Getting on and off the Island.
• New Jersey. The shortest road run of any Northeast state, and the awkward part is almost always the last mile: getting a wide boat off a barrier-island causeway, in the week the shore wakes up. The line items.
• Massachusetts. The longest of the runs, so the extra road day is where the money is, and anything going to the Cape crosses one of the two canal bridges. The line items.
• Rhode Island. A whole fleet in one bay, which cuts both ways: the yards are busy, and boats landing in the same water in the same week are the easiest in the country to put on one truck between them. The line items.

Ask the yard at the top end what they want from you before she arrives, and ask it early. Some want the cradle shipped ahead, some have their own, and some will want her splashed the day she lands because they have nowhere to put her.

Spring is the better season to run her up on her own bottom

If she is a boat that can make the passage, the northbound trip is the easier of the two to do by water, and a good many owners who truck her down run her back.

The Gulf Stream sets north along the eastern seaboard, so an offshore passage north is going with the current rather than against it, which is worth real speed and real fuel. The daylight is longer. And the trip is a shakedown at the start of your season rather than at the end of it, which is when you would rather find out that something needs attention.

Against that: spring weather on this coast is not settled, a delivery is a day-rate job with a tail of expenses, and a captain sitting out a blow is still a day of the delivery. What a delivery costs works through every line, and truck or captain is the decision itself.

Four things, in this order

1. January: get the clause in writing

   Ask your underwriter whether there is a named-storm or hurricane provision, the date and latitude it turns on, and what changes when it does. That answer is your real deadline and everything else hangs off it. It is also the cheapest phone call in the whole move.

2. February: book the driver and the lift together

   Drivers commit their spring windows by the end of February. The yard at the top end fills its April and May diary at about the same time. Booking one without the other is how people end up holding a truck and no lift, or a lift and no truck.

3. Four weeks out: measure and strip

   Beam at the widest point including the rubrail, height from the ground with her on the trailer she will travel on. Canvas, antennas, outriggers and anything that can flap come off in the yard, not on the morning. If she has been sitting all winter, the bottom and the running gear want looking at before she goes on a truck, not after.

4. The week itself: photograph her, both ends

   All the way round before she is loaded and again when she lands, including the hull sides, the running gear and anything already marked. That is the entire dispute process in this trade, and the people who do it never need it.