Welcome to our nightmare.
I mentioned on MaryLou's blog, that one of my fav. books was "The Boat That Wouldn't Float, by Farley Mowat and it was this book that paralled our experience with the Sarah Cee.
In the picture Sarah, seems to be quietly nestled in the harbour, my mom is standing on the back deck looking out on the river...it all seems to be so serene. You don't want to know what happened next morning.
You see we inherited this 40 ft. leaky boat from hell, from Gord's in-laws providing we could keep her afloat, and if not, they were going to sink her. And for some stupid reason we said hmmm..okay, how hard can it be to keep a boat afloat. We spent three long summers trying to to keep Sarah from her demise. You see she had a wooden hull, not a good thing, but we didn't know that. Wood, shmood, who cares, we got a boat for free!!...and a big one. The first summer when she became our "other only child from hell" we took her out of dry dock, and she sunk immediatley...we had instructions from our in-laws of what to do if she sunk, but iffin you are new to this, and don't even know how to drive the sucker...it's pretty hairy.. Apparently she has to go down first and suck up some water to get all the dry wood on her hull soaked up with water, and then after when the bilge pumps come on and pump out the water, things start to get better? After about 24 hours later, Gord, myself and the in-laws got her bobbing on top of the water. Whahooooooooooo....
Now, don't get me wrong, she was purty little thing, she had a beautiful galley, fridge, stove, cuboards and all, and built in eating area...behind that a sleeping area for two...and on one side of the eating area there were double bunks plus a long sofa underneath for sitting and such. She had a nice bathroom. In the wheel house there was a long bench sofa which could be used as a sleeping area as well. So, she was pretty well outfitted when we got her. Her hull was a little rusty to my thinking, but I thought ... a little paint...etc. I could get her in ship shape once again.
After she was bobbing for a day or two, the in-laws started giving us little lessons on how to navigate Sarah...she was a good ole girl...she took to us pretty quick and we to her. Having been on her with the in-laws before they gave her to us to use, we had some idea of what the hazards were, because old boats are so high maintenace and Gord often helped fixing this and that, so we had a clue....but....not really...let's face it..we didn't have a clue in the cluescloset what the next three years would bring. (we are sore loosers..we didn't give up that quick.)
Being that this is a really long story, and it's 11:00 pm I will try to finish it this week in a few chapters with some more pictures. It really pisses me off that at that time we were using a crappy old movie camera for everything and I don't have as many pictures of her as I would have liked to show..especially when we was sinking......lordy...the times we had. And I have to thank me lucky stars I'm still here to tell about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment