Maiden Voyage

Well, our new impeller unit finally arrrived! A neighbor down the road works at the boat house over in Brooklin, and he was a big help to us...lending us his muffs to try out the outboard without filling a big tub of water. We eventually got our own because it was so nifty! He also gave us some oil for it. Anyway, Dad let me help put on the new impeller and we were ready to try it out. So we hooked up the hose to the muffs and it was definitely cycling the water through better. We were so thankful! Now it was time to take it out down to the town landing. So one of us called Matt and he came down to help us launch it.

We got it out and for some reason it was sputtering and not turning over. We didn't know what was wrong with it, so meanwhile we started drifting out into the harbor. Thankfully, Dad had given us some wise instructions to take oars with us in the boat...just in case. So we were able to start paddling back. The whole thing was so hilarious! When we got back Jay seemed quite confident he could get it going, so he peeled off his boots and socks and jumped on with us.

We still sputtered a little bit, and a friendly fisherman asked us if we needed an oar or needed help getting back in, but it wasn't long before the engine turned over Jay got it going.

We had taken off the cap to try to find out what could be wrong with it. It looked so redneck! We had a great time!

                                                           Big brothers are the best!

We got out in the harbor and were having so much fun that we forgot that the tide was slowly coming in on Jason's boots. When we were coming in near the land we noticed Matt was pointing to something. We were confused at first until we saw a boot floating on top of the water just a little ways from shore.

Most people use their gaff for lobstering...we use it for rescuing our shoes from floating out to sea. hahaha

Jay told us we needed new gas, because we still had the old stuff in it. So we got some new gas in it and she ran way better! We'll share some pictures of putting out our mooring in the next post.