This Old Boat

 

The whole country appears to be experiencing a heat wave. We know it is much hotter down in Baltimore so it’s hard to feel good about complaining, but without air conditioning, it’s pretty hot here in Port Washington too. We swim off of the boat, several times a day, and it does help. A lot. We had planned to go ashore and take in a movie, any movie, just to spend some time in air conditioning. But the two movie theaters that used to be within walking distance have both closed, casualties of Covid I expect. We go in for groceries instead and go nuts with all the fresh fruits and vegetables, rare commodities on a sail boat. Our eyes are much bigger than our icebox, and having stuffed our foldable cart to bursting, we are forced to buy a couple grocery totes to handle the overflow. How we think we’re going to eat all of it before it goes bad, I have no idea. We take the boat to the dock to fill the fuel and water tanks, and offload some trash bags. After three nights on a mooring here, we are ready to move on. 

I have been using scopolamine patches to ward off seasickness, and it has been mostly successful in that I have not actually gotten sick. But many of the passages have been pretty uncomfortable, leaving me queasy and wrung out even after we stop. We had planned on making it to Port Jefferson in one go, but Rick could see I was struggling and pulled us in to Oyster Bay instead. I know we anchored in a beautiful spot for one night, and I even took some pictures of an adorable sailing school armada, but I don’t remember much beyond that. I think I just went to bed.

The next day was beautiful, a clear cloudless sky and a calm sea. We should have known this day was too perfect. Continuing with our summer theme of way too much or almost no wind, we were forced to motor all the way to Port Jeff, and that’s where the trouble started.

The signature smoke stacks of Port Jeff

Having passed inside the channel and into the harbor, Rick picks a spot off to the side to anchor and slows the boat, putting us in neutral for a moment. As he pushes the throttle into gear once again, he realizes that he has no thrust, no forward motion at all. The engine has not cut out, and it appears to even go into gear, but the propeller seems totally disengaged. We are dead in the water. 

Thankfully we have already coasted into a choice anchoring site, off the main channel and out of boat traffic. “We are so lucky!” Rick exclaims, after letting down the anchor. “Imagine if this had happened just a few minutes earlier when we were out in the Long Island Sound, deep water and no wind. Or much worse, if we had been in the East River, riding the current through Manhattan with no way to steer, running into other boats or the embankments on the sides. Wow. We were born under a lucky star alright!” This is the battle cry of optimists. I bite my tongue and keep myself from replying that if we were truly lucky, this wouldn’t have happened at all. 

Rick goes to work on the problem, first trying to figure out exactly where the problem lies by removing all the gear and storage items from the engine locker, then attempting to take apart the throttle and gear assembly. There is precious little space to move and work on the boat under ordinary circumstances, and now the cockpit is awash in detritus. I try to move inside the boat to get out of Rick’s way, but it’s pretty bad in there too. 

No closer to finding a solution, Rick calls the local marina to see if one of their boat geniuses might be able to help us. It is now almost five o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and it is looking like we will need to be towed in, and then spend at least the next two days at the dock, waiting until Monday for someone to even look at our problem. This could be extraordinarily expensive.   Still hoping to avoid such a fate, Rick makes a few other calls, and manages to get our old friend Eric on the line, the mechanic we have relied on more than once back in Baltimore. Eric knows exactly what’s going on, and after perusing a few pictures sent via email, gives Rick some pointed instructions on how to fix it himself. A cable has come loose and simply needs to be reattached. Of course, what sounds so easy on the phone ends up taking Rick hours to accomplish. Our boat has an outsized engine, not the original that the boat was designed around, and it fills the engine room so completely that there is almost no room to physically see what you are working on, let alone maneuver tools and such. I am amazed at Rick’s stick-to-it-iveness; he continues long past the time when I would have given up. But with a little help from me (I held the flashlight, very difficult and requiring much skill) Rick emerges triumphant. We have a working engine at last!

The morning after, we celebrate by going ashore to the gorgeous sand hills at the entrance to Port Jefferson. We'll head for Block Island this afternoon!