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At last! First boat trip of 2005

By Sallie Satterthwaite
SallieS@Juno.com

What with funerals, showers, medical appointments and unstable weather, our first boating trip of the year kept being postponed. We blocked out a week in April, and don’tcha know when Dave gave the engine its last test run before departure, it failed.

You’ll have to ask him what the problem was; I get lost in discussions of water pumps and impellers. All I knew was that that there would be at least a week’s delay because he had to send off for parts since his trusty Honda dealer no longer handles Hondas. And, of course, when the part arrived, it wasn’t the one he needed.

But finally, finally, we were on our way to Lake Martin, Ala., trailering the little trawler loaded with food and beer, books and newspapers, cell phone and computer. All the important stuff.

Nearly a week stretched in front of me, time to catch up on the news, to write a few columns ahead, to rearrange carelessly filed files, and to assign several hundred digital photos into neatly labeled albums. Except for murderous no-see-ums and hot mid-days, the week was beautiful. I made lists of notes for a column on the glory around us. How about this?

“Pale pink mountain laurel cascading down steep embankments cushioned by a fluffy carpet of fern….”

“Clouds exploding into the blue sky - they look like they’re trying to bluff us off the lake…”

The boat went obediently into the water, tugging only a little against the line that secured her to the trailer. All systems were go. We parked car and trailer under a shady tree and putted away to a favorite small cove to put up the scalloped canopy, make up our bunks, and fix dinner.

The idea was to get away for awhile, maybe catch up on some sleep. That we did, and maybe even banked some against a future sleep deficit. Didn’t listen to the Braves games. Didn’t even turn on TV. Slept in the T-shirt I wore all day, figuring my early evening dip washed shirt and me.

We didn’t go very far, just from cove to cove. The boat uses very little gasoline, but at the $3 a gallon that the marinas charge, we didn’t feel free to set out on any long cruises. Just as well. Our luck was about to change.

Lake Martin has deeper water than most of the lakes we’ve cruised, allowing us to anchor closer to the bank than we usually do. Ideal depth in calm weather is 10-15 feet. Shallower and we could hit an invisible rock or tree trunk. Deeper is too dangerous for Dave to dive to untangle a fouled anchor line.

The cove we chose our last evening out had some downed trees near the bank, but looked good toward the center. We began the familiar ritual of anchoring: Dave leaves the engine in a very slow reverse, steps forward to undo the anchor chain and drops it into the water. I slip into the pilot’s seat and when Dave thinks the Danforth has a bite, he tells me to give it a bit more gas backward, to set the anchor.

This time it dragged, and we were back nearer to the logs along the bank than we should have been. Just as we heard a raspy change in the engine, Dave yells, “Put it in forward! We’re too close to the bank.”

Now understand, I’m pretty good at this, and before he had even spoken, I had already shifted to forward. “I said forward,” Dave yells loud enough to be heard over the strange noise from the engine.

“I am in forward,” I scream back, shifting to neutral and then forward two more times. Each time I threw it into forward and gunned the engine, the boat responded by roaring backward.

Somehow we figured out that we’d best put it in neutral until we could exorcise whatever demon possessed our little vessel. The anchor finally set, Dave went over the side to see what was wrong.

I have a tendency to blame myself when such things happen, but this time the nautical detective blamed himself. When he did repairs on the water pump earlier, he failed to tighten the whatchamacallits on the shifting rod, which came loose from the shifter. The worst casualty was the prop. One of the submerged trees ate half of one blade and had started on the next.

Naturally, our clever mariner had a spare, which he installed while treading water under the stern. I handed tools down to him, scared to death I’d drop an heirloom into the lake.

(Oh, yes. Dave’s tools all have pedigrees: where, when, why bought. “I still have this cross-point screw driver I bought at Two Guys when I had to replace the water heater. Paid $1.99 for it.”)

The transplant completed, we cautiously started the Honda and ran it through the gears several times. All was well. Dinner was good, albeit a mishmash of leftovers that wouldn’t make it home, and we had a cooling rain our last night on the water. Take-out and the trip home were uneventful.

Well, except for the lost coin purse. But that demands a column of its own.