13 July 2013, Nouvelle Caledonie
Now where were we? Oh, yes. About to have a miracle, after pulling apart the clutch…. And pull apart we did, with Greg from Skedaddle issuing instructions and Capt. K playing monkey wrench, to many a quip of the ‘blind leading the partly sighted’ variety from the assembled peanut gallery. Hilarious and rather messy. All the bits came out, and all the bits went back in again. Cupkake had the champagne ready. We turned on the donk. Donk, donk, donk it went. Actually it stayed. Still. Engine merrily revving its little heart out. Boat sitting placidly. Christine and Chris arrived amidst all of this, no doubt wondering…. We adjourned for a miracle-still-about-to-happen drink. Chris started asking rather difficult clutch type questions. Greg and I fudged. Rather well, I thought, considering we had NO idea…. Next morning, Greg came back with a big new theory. Before he could test it, I sent him swimming to watch the propeller go around whilst I was played aimlessly with the controls. No propeller!!! No propeller??? What, AWOL? That NEW propeller? It fell off. Thanks for that. But why? Actually, we still don’t know. The Loctite was out of date. We didn’t torque the main retaining nut enough perhaps… The clutch was definitely slipping. C’est la vie. So how to reverse park into a marina berth? Easy: Meet Chris the tugboat man. We lashed the dinghy fore and aft, just so I could play the captain from the Titanic movie, barking “Full Astern!!!!” in my best bridge-captain voice.
The good news: we have a new propeller. It spins. The clutch clutches. The boat swims. The Captain giggles inappropriately. All good. Well, except for the weather. Chris and Christine must be rain and thunder Gods. Zeus and Zeustine? Check this out: