The Excellent Adventure

There’s something to learn every single time you take the boat from the dock.

Take this morning. We’d put off doing the pumpout until there was no more putting it off, if you know what I mean. Had. To. Go. So, off we went. Cast off from the dock, head down the channel, and as we turned out into the fairway, the engine started to shake, badly.

Jason’s zipping around messing with lines and watching for traffic, so he doesn’t immediately notice.

“Um, Babe? The engine is trembling.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Um… Babe? Yes it is. It’s chugging.”

So Jason goes rocketing down into the port engine compartment. And yes, it’s chugging. The entire port side of the boat, in fact, is suddenly shaking like Carmen Miranda. I’ve thrown that side into neutral, and so I stop watching Jason, because with the wind from the starboard forward quarter, and only the starboard engine going, we’re clearly listing heavily. So I’m focused on keeping us straight while words like “engine mount” and “probably busted” and visions of dollar signs go floating past me from the open engine compartment. Engine trouble is never simple and always expensive. I’m thinking haulouts, I’m thinking mayhem, I’m thinking all kinds of dire thoughts.

We dock at the pumpout, and it’s as I’m throwing Jason the stern line that I look back and see two huge shreds of plastic bag float up from behind the boat. And the mental gears click.

“Um, Babe? That look like prop-shredded bag to you?”

Jason looks. Looks closer. And starts giggling. Apparently he was having the same visions of mayhem that I was. Which was nice, because when you’ve both panicked, it makes it that much easier to laugh hysterically at the plastic bag that was wrapped around your prop, and the cause of the shimmy. We finished the pumpout, and never a smoother ride back to the dock was had, by two more relieved people.

And if I catch the bonehead who threw that bag in my Bay…

Tags: learning, Maintenance

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