A post by Mark
Good thing we’re having good luck in Alabama. Otherwise, this morning, we would have lost our dinghy, Willie would have run away, I would have lost my shoe in the mud, my phone would have died, and we would have lost our steering in the middle of the channel near a barge. Luckily, none of those happened.
However, the 45 mins from 5:30 to 6:15 this morning were quite exciting.
It started slowly enough – I took Willie for a dinghy ride to the shore to go for a quick walk. I pulled the dinghy up the boat ramp near our anchorage – and explicitly thought – wow, I pulled it up a little too much, may be a pain in the neck to get back in the water.
After a 10 or so min walk, I head down the ramp only to find the dinghy drifting away. We’re anchored just a bit downstream of a lock and dam. Turns out, when they lowered the water in the lock, the run-off raised the water near us about a foot – enough to float the dinghy off the ramp and into the river. I quickly make my way down the ramp – Willie has no idea what’s going on now. I start wading trough the water, banging into big rocks under the water with my shins (fun times). Willie decides that he has gone far enough in the water and hits the brakes. So, I drop his leash and keep going in. Then, I take a step, and come up without my shoe. My other one flips off the next step, and I am quickly waist deep. Time to swim. The dinghy is only 5 or 10 feet away – so it’s pretty easy to get and pull back to shore. Luckily, through this episode, Willie decided to just wade in chest-deep and enjoy the show.
Once we’re back on shore, I start looking for my shoes. Did I mention its still pretty dark out – so, no easy task. I find the second shoe floating a few feet off shore – so I figure the first one must be close. So, now, I’m reaching around in knee-deep muck – and, in less than 30 seconds, I find it. Took a bit of effort to actually pull it out – but as I mentioned in the beginning – we’re having good luck in Alabama and I get it out. Sometime around now, I remember that my phone is in my lifejacket pocket – ugh. I open it up – its damp, but not dripping – and is still working. I shut it down and when I get back to the boat, stick it in a bag of rice (note – not sure if the phone is going to make it – I’m going to keep it on rice for the night).
The ride back to the boat is uneventful. We dry off Willie (and me), and get ready to leave. By now, it’s around 6:15. Up goes the anchor, I use the engines to turn us around and head us out of the anchorage, and start to use the steering wheel to maneuver us out. Funny thing – the wheel doesn’t seem to do much. I turn it to the left – we don’t go left. I turn it to the right – we don’t go right. At one point, I spin it around like a cartoon – just to confirm my fear. Yep – no steering. Good thing we have only moved about 6’ from lifting the anchor. So – down goes the anchor again. The steering fix turns out to be pretty simple – a set screw had worked its way out and the gear that connects the wheel to the rudders fell off its axel. We quickly found all the parts, put it back together (now, with Loctite on the screw), and were lifting the anchor and on our way in 15 / 20 minutes. The rest of the day was uneventful – 51 miles downriver – we were at the marina by 12:45. Later tonight, we’re taking the marina’s courtesy car to the local Walmart Supercenter to re-stock on food / drink / etc. After being on the boat 12-days straight, this is a real highlight!
As I write this, I’m looking at this plaque on our boat…
Truer words have never been spoken – for this has been a great adventure so-far.
Note: The phone is dead… It may be doing something, but the screen is fried (I dropped it a few months ago and it cracked – so I’m guessing the combination of cracked screen and water wasn’t a good one). Oh well… we were planning to only have one phone anyway.