It’s Always Something With Boats

 Back on the Hard!

After a tense hour in the morning the owner of the prop shop, John came to the boat and said he had good news. There was a marina about an hour and a half in the direction we were headed that could pull us out the same day. So this was Monday July 25th. So we fired up the engines and cast off.

We got to Happy Days Boat Rental at about 1:00 pm, they don’t rent any more it is now really a marina for house boats. They were waiting for us when we arrived to pluck us out of the water. The last 100 yards to the ramp was extremely shallow causing us to stir the bottom. Yet another pucker ride. Within a half hour Next Chapter was back on the hard. The mechanic Mitch went right to work. He had the props off in no time. Then he said, “hey your shaft bearings are shot”. 

Great! For our non boating friends,  shaft bearing hold the shaft as it passes thru the strut which keeps the shafts from wobbling around as the propeller spins. If we were going to change the bearings we would need new ones and we were in the middle of nowhere Canada. He made a call to the prop shop and we were in luck. They had replacement bearings that fit out struts. So off we went to drop off the props so they could get to work on them and pick up the new bearings. Back to the boat an hour later.

Mitch went right to work to press out the old bearing and put the new ones in. Well no love. The struts had to be pulled off the boat and taken to a machine shop to replace the bearings because the struts were unique. So we worked together till about 8 pm to finally get the struts off. Up here in Canada the sun doesn’t set until almost 8:45 pm. After a brawl to get them off the boat Mitch threw them into his truck so he could  drop them off at the machines shop in the morning. Long day so we went to bed early. The next morning the owner of the marina, Frank came over and introduced himself and offered to take us into Bobcaygeon, another quaint Canadian town. 

Sue did some provisioning and we walked the town. There is a whole community of houseboat owners at Happy Days Boat Rentals that were all so friendly and offered to help in any way they could. As the hours ticked by on Tuesday the anxiety level increased so I went to work and did some cleaning and waxing on the boat. About 4:30 the phone rang, it was Mitch! 

The props and struts were done and he would be to the boat at 6 pm  to put everything back together. Loud cheers. When he arrived he did not have any help so I jumped in again and we went to work. By 8 pm we had Next Chapter ready to splash. We enjoyed a couple of well deserved cold beers and called it a wrap.  We spent another night on the hard but enjoyed a campfire with the boaters from the marina. Other than the extremely pesky mosquitos it was a great evening. At 7:00 am Mitch was back wanting to put us back into the water as it was calm and he wanted to tow us out to deep water so we had no chance of hitting ground. 7:45 am on Wednesday we were back in the water and on our way. What a relief. I asked to pay the bill before we left but they said don’t worry about it when we get it together we will send you the bill for payment.  Just another example to the kind hearted nature of total strangers.