Until I buy a new gas tank for this outboard, it's only got about a 3 gallon capacity. I judged it to be about half full, and so bought another 3 gallons on our way playing musical cars. Even with an untested outboard, my brain was saying that a 13 mile journey, at say, 5 knots, should only take,2, MAYBE 3 hours? And ok, if we were to assume a gallon per hour consumption, that still leaves me an additional 50% capacity in which to call a buffer. My brain was also factoring in light breeze and calm seas. And not an outboard that had the prop mere inches beneath the surface. Now I should also mention that it was a pure guess, since a motor of that size, pushing a boat of this size, and I truly don't know how much it actually sips or guzzles. I was spitballing. To be fair, some of my best work is done that way.
The first indication of rethinking the voyage was when we made the turn west out past the marker and directly into oncoming swell. It felt like every third wave, the prop was out of the water, the momentum would drop, and we'd have to build it back up. It felt like it took forever just to get going, and we probably hadn't even gone a mile before I was seriously questioning how much fuel I brought versus should have brought. Oh, and let me fill you in on the other fun part of this boat that I discovered not long before. There are anchors on this boat. Four of them, in fact. There are two in the bow which seem to be the kind you find at Walmart. Which frankly, I wouldn't even use as a lunch anchor on glass water. They're seriously that undersized. There is exactly zero chain. There's a few lengths of heavy rode, but maybe forty or fifty feet, max. There's also the remnants of what appeared to be a spool of 3/8" rode from again, Walmart is what comes to mind - only it was just as if someone had slid this pinecone shaped rode off the spool and kicked it in the locker. Not attached to anything, but had at least some length. Another anchor is a small collapsible 4 bladed thing in a bag with maybe another hundred feet of rode. I call this a dinghy delight. And then, I finally found an appropriate sized danforth in the cockpit locker. Just chilling around, not hooked to anything, just.. there. The reason I bring this up, is because my mind was already trying to make an escape plan if the worst should happen. Even a mile out, I had never run this particular motor under load, much less any length of time. Who knows what might happen there. Perhaps the conditions would suck so much fuel up, we'd run out. The rig wasn't fully tuned at the dock (because it wasn't supposed to be bad weather, and even in the channel wasn't THAT bad so when I had decided to motor the journey, we decided the rig could wait. Bad call. We probably could've gotten away with it on the fly, adjusting as we bounced but I prefer not to. The main was on and lashed, but with 15 knot winds here and there, it would be a last resort.
We pressed on, doing what we could to zig and zag between swells, until we finally could make enough of a turn more southerly where the waves weren't breaking straight on. This allowed the outboard to keep from coming up and out, and progress started being a possibility. I focused instead, on a point up ahead on the lake, West Ninemile Point. I estimated it to be the halfway point of the journey. I had already put a little more gas in the outboard tank, leaving what looked to be about 2 gallons in reserve. I decided that as long as we at least made it there, then we should have enough fuel to last. Spoiler alert, we did. Though maybe I shouldn't have sounded so sure of myself when my dad asked if we had enough to make it. Pft, of course we do. We ended with probably a half gallon, maybe three quarters, left. Totally reasonable. But, we did start to make progress. It was slow, but it was there. A running joke was "At least we haven't sunk yet!" in reference to the leak from earlier. At one point, I climbed to the bow - did I mention I have no lifelines at all, and missing stanchions? Because safety. Seems to sit a little higher than my last one, but it was quite a fun ride, while I tightened down the forestay a little more. This poor boat was getting bounced and loaded around pretty good, even under motor.
Finally we near the home stretch. A few miles to go, I've emptied the rest of the fuel into the tank (Dad asks "did you save any?" - Nope. Not that it would've mattered, since if it ran out of the main tank, I'd use the rest anyway. If it has room, use it. If we were going to run out completely, it wasn't going to matter what tank the last drop came from). And that's when we see the rain moving across the lake to our starboard. It gets darker over Oswego behind us. Down to the last two miles. Rain drops. Well that's fun. Waves that had started subsiding at least a little, built back up to where they were. And then the lightning starts flashing around us, the thunder. Well, I guess this trip is a little for everyone, eh?
Through the rain, we could still make out the navigational lights at the end of the channel into Little Sodus Bay. Plenty of gas left to my untrained estimate by shaking the tank. Ok, no nerves there. Time to just get in there. Fortunately we didn't have to worry about the fenders being on the wrong side, since I was docking to port anyway. Sun was fading closer to the horizon, so it was going to start getting darker quickly as we turn into the channel. Once we made the turn, the waves that had been coming across our starboard bow, now were being redirected and pushing us along into the channel, and into the bay where the waves had all but vanished. Getting behind the breakwall into Fair Point, nice and peaceful. At this point, I knew the motor would be given another test - dropping back to idle in gear, or neutral. Remember, this thing has tiller controls but because of it, there's no revving up in neutral if it starts to sputter. But it held just fine, we pulled into the slip as nicely as could be at about Eight O'clock PM, and tied her off. Grabbed my bag of clothes and my keys, and we were done. Four hours of fun, really. But at that point, the boat had survived, we had survived, and what better way to spend a Wednesday evening!
No comments:
Post a Comment