Happy Monday morning my friends, and happy 4th of July Eve! I hope all is well with you and yours. As promised….a short simple story about the incident with the boat……and probably a few other things that happen to fall out of my head at 5:30 in the blessed AM.

There we were….minding our own business….

My sister had her fancy camera out on the boat that day, she loves to take pictures of the wildlife, we knew there was a place around the corner on Toe Point off of Patos that usually has seals sunning themselves, so we headed in that direction. When I say we, I mean me, I was driving the boat at the time.

We motored by the area, sure enough there were seals bobbing around in the water. I was trying to get close, but not too close, not only because of the cute little creatures, but also the rocks….which I suddenly realized we were perhaps too close to the seals, which means that I was probably too close to the seals. I idled down all the way, just at the same time Joe decided to go check on how we were doing, just at the same time my sister came in to say, “hey, you don’t need to be this close…” when the boat came to a sudden halt with a bit of a thump.

First thought that went through my head was “great, I’ve ran us a-ground, we have a huge hole in the haul, and we are in big trouble.” But Joe seemed to be calm and collected, checking on a few things here and there. I texted his big brother to let him know we might be in trouble, Bruce, was also calm and collected and told me to do exactly what Joe said to do and things would be okay. Did I mention that according to the weather that morning there was supposed to be a big storm brewing off the coast due to hit within hours of us getting back to the dock?

After some investigation, it appeared that I had managed to “bench” the boat on a set of an outcropping of flat rocks. Good news was, the tide was going in the right direction, Joe was smart enough to toss out the anchor to prevent us from going closer to shore, and the tide would lift us off the rocks in no time, literally it took about 10 minutes. The bad news was, the boat wouldn’t go into gear – no forward or backwards.

After we were lifted from the rocks by the tide, Joe thought it best to get us into the cove, so we could investigate what was going on with the gear shifter. Using our outboard motor we puttered over to the cove to check things out.

We have the boat fully stocked with overnight gear, food, and water. There was no question that we were prepared to stay the night if need be and ride out the storm until we could get help out to us. We have three very capable family members that were poised and ready to come help if needed, in addition to several friends that we could have called. It was certainly not a dire emergency, things were going to be okay. I felt like an idiot, and thought for sure I had damaged the boat, and swore I would never drive the boat again, and yes, I even cried when I talked to my daughter, but really, in the entire scheme of things, everything was going to be okay.

Turns out the sleeve on the gear shifter had been compromised – which, while hashing over the events of the day over dinner that night at a local restaurant- we discovered that Joe and I had both grabbed the shifter when we first hit the rocks, him from outside, me from inside, jamming the wire and causing it to crimp itself.

So, we learned a few things….communication is key, let Joe take over when things go wonky, no matter how much I want to get out of the boat to “lift” it off the rocks, there’s no getting out of the boat – unless of course it’s sinking, then at that time, it’s best to get onto the skiff and head for shore.

Thankfully, Joe has several years of boating experience, both with power boats and sail boats. The boys are both very handy and know a thing or two about fixing all things mechanical and otherwise. No drama, just sort things out and move on type situation.

Turns out the boat needs some new paint on the bottom, the gear shifter will be an easy fix, that we can get to at the end of the season, for now we can still do what we want for the summer, and yes I did indeed drive the boat again, just shortly after the incident actually, helping us get into the harbor while Joe got the bumpers out to prepare for docking.

And I’ve still yet to see any pictures of those darn seals!!!

Everything is okay. There will be more learning experiences along the way, hopefully nothing too major, but I’m sure we will be able to work through them as they happen, because that’s what good partners do – they support each other, trust each other, and do their best for each other.

Until next time, stay safe, be happy and enjoy! I will have a very interesting update on the gnome class drama soon…..