It was a late morning start to our little trip out onto the lake in the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout. The purpose of our trip was to give BeezleBub more training, helping him to become a competent boater. It wasn't a long jaunt, only an hour.
We had finished with this series of lessons and BeezleBub had just brought The Boat off plane. We switched places at the helm, I put The Boat in gear, added some throttle......and went nowhere.
A quick check of the the throttle connections at both ends found nothing wrong. I killed the engine, tilted the stern drive up to it's maximum travel, leaned over the transom and saw that we no longer had a propeller. It was just the bare shaft. No prop. No line cutter. No nothing.
We had a spare prop. We had a spare spinner cone. We had a spare main prop bolt. No problem.
Unfortunately they were all back at The Manse. Problem.
I had BeezleBub drop the anchor and I got on the marine radio to call TowBoatU.S. (Think of them as the AAA of the water.) After explaining our plight they headed over from Weirs Beach to give us a tow back to our slip.
Twenty minutes later the familiar red tow boat arrived. In a few minutes we were under tow and on our way back to Smith Cove.
An hour later Cap'n Dave of TowBoatU.S. eased us into our slip, helped us tie up, and then tied up the tow boat. It was then a matter of filling out the paperwork. A $250 tow ended up costing us nothing. It's one of the advantages of belonging to AAA's marine analogue.
A quick trip to the local marina's parts department to purchase a replacement line cutter and we were off to The Manse. BeezleBub and I gathered the parts we needed, placed them into the trunk of the trusty Intrepid, and then went into the cool interior of The Manse. There was no need to rush right back.
A return to The Boat to affect repairs is planned for later today. Fortunately the job should only take us about 15 minutes. Unfortunately we will have to make the repairs while in the water.
Oh, the price we pay to enjoy our time out on the lake!
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