Wed Aug 31: Black Rapids Wall to …. er, unplanned stop at Hurst Marina

This is really the only picture you need - it sums up the day, and our immediate future.

Damage to 3 of the 5 blades on the propeller

So, ok.  Here’s how it played out.  We left the wall in the company of a small sailboat, also headed for Kingston.  We smoothly managed one set of locks, sharing the chamber with the sail. Coming out the other side we somehow got distracted and stopped paying close attention to the red/green markers (probably thinking it was a canal and how hard could it be).  In all our days and thousands of miles on the water, we have never both failed to be on the lookout.  But for a brief moment we slipped out of the marked channel as we looked through the binoculars at the next look.  As soon as Rick saw it he jerked the boat to the left to get back in. (In addition we should have put the boat in neutral). And, of course-all the bad signs were leading up to this-WHAM. We hit something, most likely a rock. Almost immediately a ragged vibration began to shake the boat and we knew the worst had happened… They say there are only two kinds of boaters-those who have hit something, and those who will hit something at some point.

We had a flood of emotions - anger, disappointment, fear and sadness that we had damaged the boat, but we were still on the water coming up to locks 14-15-16 so we had to keep going.  We slowed the engine way down to minimize the vibration and limped up to the locks.  The wind was blowing once again in a direction that made it hard to get up to the lock wall but we made it through and as we were leaving Melanie asked the lock master if he knew a place that could haul the boat and repair the propeller.  He suggested the Hurst Marina about 5 miles further down the canal. 

We continued to limp along at about 3 mph (if you think 7 mph is slow, you should try 3) and Rick called the marina.  We were in luck as they had the space to take us in and the equipment to lift the boat and check the propeller. We arrived at the marina, tied up to the dock and tried to process what had just happened.   Yes, we know accidents happen - we’ve had a couple of them lately with broken collar bones and dings to the hull. But we can’t help feeling bad and responsible for the circumstances that led up to the accidents.  These accidents could have been avoided …. but they happened so we have to deal with the consequences.   The marina staff were great and worked out a plan to haul the boat out of the water tomorrow.  

So with nothing else to do and a big bunch of thunderstorms coming through we took a short nap and then did a puzzle.  With all the bad things that have happened during this part of the trip we feel like we’ve lost our mojo, our will to continue.  So as we puzzled, we did our best to try to remember all the wonderful, amazing things we had done and seen during the first part of this year’s trip.  It has been a great trip so far and as all boaters know, stuff happens.  We just need to remember that and stay focused on the good, with an attitude of gratitude.  Once we are done with self-flagellation, of course.

We will give you all an update tomorrow once we have the boat out of the water (actually - you can see a preview of what we found in the picture at the top of this post - more details in tomorrow)

One plus-we did NOT get the tornado 

We did get dramatic weather to match our many moods…