I received a post on another message board asking me what we had learned from our experience shipping the Cape Dory overland by truck. This was not our first experience with boat shipping, so I will give all three experiences. The first time, in California, we used San Diego boat movers to move a Newport 30 from Wilmington to San Diego. While expensive, it was uneventful. The boat arrived in good condition, on time. Our second overland move was quite a different experience. We used a company we found online called Anchors Aweigh. We were shipping our Cabo Rico 38 from San Diego to Baltimore. Picking the boat up in San Diego went fine. They arrived on time and the loading went well. They arrived in Baltimore before us so the boat had already been unloaded and blocked up when we got here. Then the nightmare began. Our forward deck hatch had been broken into, and from all appearances, someone had actually been living aboard our boat while it was enroute. The head was clogged (I dare not even try to imagine with what), the fireplace had the remnants of a fire they had tried to start with paper. (Thank God they were unsuccessful, because the stove pipe was not in place.) We had been living aboard prior to the boat being shipped. The intruders had stolen all of my husband's clothes and left their raggy stuff in its place. A lot of the food had been eaten and there were empty containers all over the place. The bed had obviously been slept in. When we saw the inside of the boat, we were so upset we had to spend a couple of days in a hotel, then we stripped out the boat and threw everything away, the linens, the remaining food, the paper plates and cups. It just seemed so dirty to us. When we called the shipping company to complain, they talked to the driver and of course he said "absolutely not, didn't happen on my watch". But we had difficulties with that for good reason. Lance was there when the boat pulled out of San Diego. Everything was secure and there was certainly no one on board. When it was unloaded in Baltimore at the Baltimore Marine Center it just so happened that it was blocked up right in front of their security camera. They reviewed the tapes from the time it arrived until we got there and there was absolutely no one around the boat during that time, at least not on deck or near the hatch. The boat movers refused to deal with it though and would not even acknowledge the problem. It would have been more trouble than it was worth to fight them, so we cleaned up the mess and moved on. This last move with the Cape Dory went well on the part of the boat movers. Scott at Load-a-Boat (we found them on Yachtworld) was extremely helpful with everything. The eBay listing had stated that there was a crane at the storage site in Louisiana, but when I called to make arrangements with the yard, we were told that there was in fact no crane there. (That was really the only difficulty we had in the shipping process.) All they had was a regular forklift. I called Scott at Load-a-Boat and he made arrangements for a crane to meet his driver at the storage yard and got it for what we believe was a very reasonable price. His driver paid for the crane on that end and they added it to our invoice. The boat was delivered in good condition and in good time. While it was a good experience, we are glad we are getting a trailer for the Cape Dory. We just hate it that the process is so "out of our control" with a boat mover. I hope someone will find this information useful, if not at least entertaining. Becky http://blog.oldragbaggersonline.com