Boat Trip

Yesterday we went out to move the boat from the naval marina down to a marina that is much closer to our house, only a 5 minute drive! A friend of ours was along to give us another set of hands. We thought it would only take about 2 hours or so....

Dan and Ronnie tieing the pick up stick onto the pennants so we could drop off the mooring ball and head out:


As soon as we started off I realized I had almost no power and the steering was really tight. We hoped that as we went along the growth on the bottom and the running gear would wear off and we would pick up speed. Ah no! We could only go about 1500 rpm and about 2 km over the ground! We usually travel 15-18 km! So we decided that we would just clunk along and it would just take much longer to get there. Mom was great to ok leaving work early and pick Danny up at school since we figured it would take us about 7-8 hours to get to our new marina.
Dan was really frustrated, kept checking the engines, the gauges, the strainers. But all looked ok. We had tried to get a diver to clean the bottom and running gear before we left but he said it was too cold and we didn't think it was that bad, boy were we wrong :(

Ms V. enjoying snack time :)


Chillin out on deck with Ronnie and daddy while momma struggles to keep the boat on course:

She had a great time, kept her floatie on and walked all around the boat, playing with toys she had forgotten about :)

Taking a nap onboard, she slept for an hour and would have slept more but we had anchored and she heard the noises:


After about 4 hours we hit the halfway mark and the part of the river that intersects two other creeks and the cross currents were so strong we were not going fast enough to keep our motion forward. We tried several things, Dan thought it was me and took over, but we just could not make any headway with the cross currents. So we decided to head into one of the creeks and anchor and then figure out our next step. Ronnie called his wife and asked her to pick us up and drive me down to our car we had left at our new marina. Since we were heading in I called mom to tell her we were stopped and I would pick Danny up.

Ms V swinging after getting off the boat and waiting for Ronnie's wife to pick us up. We left Dan on the boat to wrap things up while I headed down to the marina to get Dan's truck:


We had to head back up to the base to pick up my car after getting Danny at school and Dan at the marina.
If you look closely over the boat you will see the helicopter, they were doing rescue practices. Danny was just thrilled to watch the guys jump out of the helicopter and then get lifted back up:

We remembered that we had unlimited towing with BoatUS so Dan called them to see if they would tow us from the creek down to our new marina and they said yes!! Best part is that it would not cost us anything!! Dan then called the yard next door to our new marina and told them what was going on and asked if there was any way they could haul us out of the water and clean the bottom now and they said Yes!! wow how amazing!
So this am we headed back up to the creek so Dan could meet the tow boat, of course it was pouring!
Poor Dan in the pouring rain bailing out the dinghy. You can just see his blue raincoat, it took him almost 30 minutes to get the water out:

When he stepped in the dinghy the water was halfway up his leg!

The boat anchored in Julington Creek:


The boat at the yard ready to be pulled and cleaned:

The boat is supposed to be hauled out this afternoon, we can not wait to see how bad it is! Danny was so excited he did not want to go to school. But it is pe and pizza day so he went :)
We will take pics and hope that the problem is just the growth on the running gear!
Please pray that is all it is!