BACKWARDS BOAT TRIP
As promised I will now start writing up a few of the little events that occurred along the way but did not get written up at the time.
THE BACKWARDS BOAT TRIP
During our wonderful weekend stay at Meredith on Lake Winnepausakee in New Hampshire there were a few things that did not go quite as planned. I have told the tale of Divot the puggle going missing for far too long and causing a neighbourhood search and rescue - only Divot knew that there was no need for either. Especially rescue - he had just happened to find an enormous dog chew and was in no hurry to come home!
Then there was my failure to notice a step as I ran out of the house to pass on the good news that Divot had just turned up. And down I went. The ankle was sprained or fractured [depending on which medical report one chooses to believe] and is still a source of irritation.
But the unplanned event I remember with a particular fondness is the boat trip. John offered to take me out for a ride on the lake in his Cobalt runabout. Now one thing all boat owners know is that boating in any form is really fraught with innumerable maintenance tasks. And the less one uses a boat the likelier it is that something won’t work. The Cobalt sits nicely protected from the elements in a boathouse - but it had not been used this season to that point. John and Divot boarded the boat while Buddy and Ben decided they would rather stay in the gardens despite our encouragement to come along.
The Cobalt started up just fine and after a short warm up John backed her out of the boathouse. After a little way he swung her round and engaged forward gear. Or, rather, he tried to engage forward gear. He tried, I tried, he tried again. I raised the engine hatch to see if I could do anything with the transmission cables. No, nope, no way. So there we were, unable to back into the boathouse and unable to reverse at anything more than a snail’s pace. Well it was a nice morning, we had no deadlines and the local marina was not too far away. Well, not normally - but in reverse it took a while. Eventually we got through to the marina guys by phone and they came out to tow us in.
It did give us plenty of time to appreciate the scenery of that beautiful lake - and another small adventure to relate here!
Here we are being taken under tow:
