So Himself has been really working hard and has the v berth almost prepped; scraped, sanded and scrubbed down. He has been covered in
paint chips alot recently. As a reward I packed a nice lunch and then while he was busy scraping and
sanding his heart out I stowed all the
work supplies and tools in the
cabin, started up the
motor and cast off. The plan was to call him above
deck when we were out of the slip and into the main channel out of the marina. I was planning on sparing him the anxiety he was gonna have watching me take her out with out anyone at my
elbow watching... he is SUCH a nervous nelly...
So it was beautiful, sunny and calm, perfect
weather for practicing maneuvering our new little hole in the
water... Backed out so sweet and easy, put it in forward and eased ahead. Shifted the tiller to bring us to starboard and
head straight up the marina channel. And I notice the tiller won't move past the centerline. HUMMM. Shift it slightly back to starboard, moves fine, shift back to centerline and can't move beyond it. Try shifting back to starboard and discover it is now locked in line with the center of the
boat and won't swing either direction. What followed was a slightly hysterical
deck dance as I realized I had no
rudder and was heading towards a neighbors
boat. fast. or at least it seemed in the moment to be very rapidly... Hit the reverse and slowed up enough to back away from the other boat, calling calmly but with great urgency for Himself to come up RIGHT ****ING NOW please, which, bless his heart he did, and like a good german soldier he followed instructions, took the
outboard in hand and ran it while I directed us close enough to the end of a
dock to make the jump from the deck to the
dock with a line in hand.
After that it was relatively calm. I pulled the boat to a stop and kept it from doing more than kissing the corner of the dock. Snubbed her off to a cleat, got a line from himself off the bow, and walked her around and back home into our slip...
well damn. that was not how I was planning on it going... so much for the romantic lunch on the bay...
Since it was a warm day I climbed into the
water and dove the
hull, searching for anything that would explain the sudden and unexpected lockup of the rudder/tiller assembly. I found the expected yucky stuff on the
hull, not too bad since I had scrapped it with a brush prior to the start of our short little trip. But nothing else fouled under the boat that would account for the technical difficulties were were experiencing...
So, now is a good time to remind myself of all that good stuff like challenges are just unexpected
learning opportunities and the whole purpose of a hobby is to have an unending and undoable number of tasks to
work towards completing. and don't get a boat if you are goal oriented and not into embracing the journey.
So now our journey has taken a turn towards the
repair and
maintenance of a tiller/rudder assembly on a
Cal 28.
HELP!!!!!!??????!!!!!!! : -O