Along the way we could see where recent high winds or tornados had caused a great deal of damage to trees. We gave thanks, once again, that we were in a safe place when the storms came through a few days ago.
We were going along fine when suddenly there was a terrible crunch and grinding noise. Shifting into neutral and looking behind us, we saw a green navigation buoy pop up that wasn’t there before. At least, Maureen hadn’t seen it as she was piloting the boat. We stopped for a moment to inspect the damage and found a good-sized hunk taken out of the propeller. Big bummer – especially when we were trying to be so careful. A little bit further up the waterway, we witnessed the disappearing buoy phenomenon for ourselves. We could see a buoy up ahead but in a matter of moments, it was gone from sight. As we neared the spot where we thought the buoy had been, it resurfaced long enough for us to confirm that it, indeed, had been there and then was pulled under once again by the fast water and currents – lurking just below the surface for the next boat to come by and get too close.
We found the anchorage just before 4 pm and it didn’t look anything like it did when we were here in late October 2009. In fact, we had noted in the blog at that time that it was one of our favorite anchorages along the Great Circle Route to date because of the lovely sandbar we were able to beach Blue Heron on. That sandbar was at least ten feet underwater this time around and we ended up throwing out an anchor and tying the stern to a small tree to keep us out of the channel. We’re hoping that on the return trip we’ll be able to enjoy the sandbar.
We replaced the damaged prop with our spare and spent the evening sitting out on the bow watching the barges go by. We tried making a couple of phone calls home – our grandson, Kevin, was having his tenth birthday – but the connections were poor and we could only talk for a few frustrating minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment