It's been a little while since my last update - lots of living going on!
After our christening of the Henry P we went shopping the next day to get some other equipment we found needed on the shakedown. Then we spontaneously decided to go camping on a lake with the boat in tow. Though reservations for campsites in the State Parks are very, very hard to come by on short notice, something opened up at one of our favorites - Rangeley Lake.
The lake was ideal for our plans as the lake itself is big and deep and easy to navigate and the park not only has a good boat launch, but it has boat slips where you can leave the boat for the duration of you camping time.
We packed up on Thursday morning and pointed our way North. The boat and trailer traveled well (I finally got ALL of the lights working on the trailer). We made the camping end simple, quick heat up meals and no elaborate camp craft. By the time our Haddock Chowder was hot for supper it, of course, started raining! It was late though and the rain stopped as we were getting ready for bed anyway.
The next morning, we hopped into the Henry P and took off along the lake at a rather leisurely pace. We explored coves and inlets we had seen from the road and practiced navigating and using the features of our chart-plotter/fish-finder. Then we turned and headed toward the ton of Rangely lake, opening her up to get some speed. She’s a bumpy ride at 25 knots! That seems almost to be a resonance point for the boat. But she’s smooth and comfortable at 18.
It was a lot of fun to see the town and the shore in general from the boat. Like all water bodies (including the coastal bay we live on), the waterfront is crowded with houses and cabins. One would never know it seeing the area from the road. We went from the town to the next village along the shore where a party boat right out of the movies was zooming along completely careless of the wake it was leaving. Rich kids and their toys!
We drove along the entire perimeter of the lake and even went into a shallow cove hoping to find some fish. Nothing worth fishing for showed up on the sonar so e made our way back to camp for lunch.
Our son had just gotten back on shore from his 6 week cruise of the TS State of Maine. He was planning to come down to our home in Brunswick for the weekend. We called him and suggested he grab a tent and sleeping bag and meet us at the lake. I love that sort of spontaneity. He had to go to our house anyway and grabbed some extra get, as we added another night to our camp itinerary in his honor.
Betty and I took a trip into town to get some extra food for the extra day and extra-large appetite of our son! A couple big steaks seems suitable to the occasion. When Steve arrived that afternoon, I was starting to feel pretty beat. I had already detected some signs that my liver might be stressed and I was feeling some discomfort in my abdomen. I turned camp duties over to Betty and Steve and settled into my camp recliner to supervise. It felt like an odd role for me as I’m usually bustling around the grill and campfire making everything easy for Betty – like an old fashioned guide.
We did some more boating the next day, even though my health seems to be going down hill. Driving the boat is easy and relaxing anyway. Steve and I want out just the two of us and he was like a kid on a roller coaster when I opened up the throttle on that little speed demon. We don’t know how fast we went as the pounding loosened up the wiring harness to the chart plotter and we lost electrical power to our gear. Steve was surprised at his Dad! We had a ball!
We decided to try out the autopilot feature of our new trolling motor so we gave her a heading toward the dock and just put up our feet. Cool feature! The next step is to get it hooked up to the chart plotter, then we can autopilot a course along waypoints on the chart, or even along depth soundings when we troll for fish at a certain depth. The technology is amazing.
We were getting a little bored with our rate of return so I fired up the engine to get back quicker. My mistake was not pulling the trolling motor up so sure enough, when we turned it on we got nowhere – the propeller nut had backed off and the propeller is somewhere in the depths! Lesson learned.
Steve headed back to Castine the next morning and Betty and I packed up and pulled the boat to drive home. We had some trailer trouble as the boat was sitting crooked. We fixed that the next day. But I was feeling worse and worse and it was slow hard work. That was Monday and I had my routine blood draw before my Tuesday chemotherapy appointment. I figured that whatever was going on with my liver would show in the blood tests and I would talk to the doctor about it on Tuesday. I spent the afternoon finally getting the electronics all talking together – Autopilot here we go!
... to be continued
