Boat Failures: Over time my husband has learned what extras he needs to bring on the boat for minor emergency repairs. There have been more than one occasion where I was handling the boat while the captain was diving into the engine compartment to make modifications and repairs. A few times we've dropped anchor where we stood for some fast (or not so fast) emergency maintenance.
That being said there are a few not-so-trivial instances of boat failure that stand out in my mind. The first occurred in our old boat on our the trip up the Hudson River to Lake Champlain. We were passing by Bear Mountain and suddenly the engine took racing like crazy. Captain quickly shut the engines down and told me to drop anchor. We had 100 feet of anchor line on the boat. Only problem - the water was over 100 feet deep at that particular place. Now we have no engine (only a single on our Luhrs) and a dangling anchor. As we watch the rocky shore coming closer and closer we try in vain to reach someone on our boat radio. Where is all that boat traffic when you need it. Because the mountains were surrounding us no one could hear us on the radio. Fortunately, we had borrowed the Captain's father's cell phone - it was early days and we didn't have one of our own, and we were able to call Sea Tow and request help.
Being the Eagle Boy Scout that he is, the Captain is "always prepared". He had an extra 100' of line on board which he was able to attach to the regular anchor line. With 200' of line, we were able to snag the bottom, and boy-oh-boy did we snag bottom. When Sea Tow arrived, we couldn't get the anchor up because the current was so strong creating such a force that we couldn't pull the anchor in at all. The Sea Tow captain told my captain that he would have to cut the anchor line and leave the anchor down at the bottom of the river. My captain was having none of that and eventually, through that stubborn way he has of getting his way without ever raising his voice, he convinced Captain Sea Tow that the anchor was coming with us.
Captain Sea Tow put our boat "on the hip" (like rafting up with a tow truck) and pulled us forward so we could pull in the line. We got all 200' of line and our anchor up on board and were towed to Haverstraw Marina in Haverstraw, NY. With the Marina restaurant as well as a lovely swimming pool, it was no hardship. We had to leave the boat there for a week to be repaired as the transmission had failed. My husband's father drove up from NJ to pick us up and bring us home. A week later, he took us back up to get the boat. Thank goodness for parents / in-laws!
On a separate occasion many years later, we had another "interesting" boat experience. We went up to NY harbor to see the Macy's 4th of July fireworks - we had our new boat this time. With our experience with our "new" boat, we have decided never to buy a new boat again - let someone else work out the kinks! In this particular story, which helped reinforce this mantra, we were looking for a place to anchor and lost our steering. Believe me NY Harbor is not a place you want to lose your ability to steer your boat. Of course we were not in an anchorage! Upon exploration of the root cause, my husband discovered that one of the screws had come loose and fallen out allowing all of the steering fluid to drain out into the bilge. Guess someone building the boat went on break and forgot to tighten it down!
Captain Boy Scout says he has some extra fluid he can use as a temporary solution so after replacing the screw / cap, we go about figuring out how to pour in the fluid. As it turned out I had what was almost a toy funnel on board which was a very good thing as this was small enough to do the job. Slowly Captain Boy Scout poured in the fluid while I helped him Who was steering the boat in NY harbor while we are having so much fun??? A dear friend who had come to enjoy the fireworks was left at the upper station keeping the boat in place using the forward / reverse controls on the twin (thank goodness) engines.
Good news story, we had the boat in operable (not great) condition and anchored before the fireworks, so we didn't miss the show. Bad news - the trip home to NJ is normally about 2+ hours in the dark. We had steering but only on the lower station and only minimal control. We had boaters cutting in front of us right and left (typical for the mass exodus back to NJ after the fireworks) but with almost no steering it was more than a little nerve wracking. The lower helm wheel had to be turned to the extreme right to move to the starboard direction and extreme left to move towards port, so Captain Hubby was repeatedly and rapidly turning the wheel full port or full starboard to get the boat to move basically in a straight line. We made it home safely with another adventure story to add to our list.
One other story that comes to mind related to boating failures occurred on a raft up trip to Long Island. Again, thankfully, this occurred in our new boat with again twin engines. The twin part is important because it is only because we have twin engines did this experience turn into an interesting boating experience instead of a day with Sea Tow. The exhaust pipe on our starboard side basically sprung a leak. Because of the cramped engine space and the number of twists and turns the pipe had to make it had a weak spot which finally gave. Captain Boy Scout shut down the starboard engine and called his friend who was hosting the raft up and asked if he could bring a replacement exhaust hose to the party - mind you an exhaust hose for a Mainship engine is about 10" in diameter (give or take) and a few feet long. We're talking "hose" here! Anyway, our friend was able to help us on this, and while rafted up next to him during our weekend getaway, the two of them pulled out the old hose and replaced it with the new one. We didn't miss any of the party, and we were able to motor home with a new and working exhaust hose in place. I told you raft up people are friendly - actually they are amazing!
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