He’s an aficionado of the C-Brats site (www.cbrats.com), the web message board/forum/photograph center created by C-Dory owners that offers encyclopedic information on every facet of C-Dory ownership from bottom paint to electronics to diesel-heaters, to dinghies, dogs, and from day-trips inside Vancouver Island to cruises on South Carolina rivers. Quite simply, the site was why I bought the boat. Rick and I had been conversing by telephone and email for about a week, discussing equipment on the boat, payment options, trailering back to Michigan, why I am selling, and how to find our place in Brooksville, Maine. He made an offer – low, but it was a very soft market, with lots of motorboats with forsale signs beside the roads – and I accepted it. This was Wednesday, and he said he’d drive with his wife from the St. Clair River and plan to arrive on the coast of Maine by noon on Saturday, about 950 miles. And now we were on sea trials with the Suzuki 90 cranked up to 5000 rpm and the #2 nun across from Castine whizzing by to port. All was well, and Rick seemed to like what he felt and saw of Urchin. He idled her down to a trolling speed and we chatted about Maine Maritime Academy, with the State of Maine training ship in view on the Castine waterfront, and I tell him of the imminent return of the schooner Bowdoin from its Arctic voyage. Rick punched the port windshield wiper button and the
blade swished left to right, then the starboard wiper went back and forth; he hit the horn and it blasted, and then he hit the manual bilge pump override. and nothing happened. We both turned and noticed, around the battery case in the stern, the slosh of rainwater the pump should have discharged overboard. The effing pump is not working. I get on my hands and knees and unclip the pump, spin the impeller, clean the intake screen. Nothing. Double eff. Is this going to jinx the deal? “It’s probably just a faulty connection somewhere,” Rick says to my intense relief. And he’s right, and he probably knows how to locate the problem with one of those little testers with two wires dangling that checks the ohms or the watts or the volts or the amperes of electrical connections. I can’t even use the words correctly, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. Whew. Double whew.
L
eslie and I have decided to sell the boat after only one summer because, well, it’s expensive to own a boat, especially with gas at the marinas hovering near five dollars a gallon. Yes, we could lug gas in five-gallon plastic jugs from the local Citgo station, but when those fumes fill our Subaru, I wonder how far from the road the explosion would toss me. And I’m retired with minimal pension income because of my checkered past: half a career in high
320 Outrage
Please contact Tom Haut for a policy review.
32 Points East Midwinter 2009
Since 1982 1/2 MILE 1/2 mileOFF off ROUTE Route 33 NORWAY INSalisbury SALISBUYCove COVE Norway DRIVE Drive in BAR Bar HARBOR,MAINE Harbor, Maine 207-288-5247 • FAX 207-288-5277 OPEN Monday-Friday 8-5,Saturday 9-12 email:bowdenmarine@acadia.net www.bowdenmarine.com
editor@pointseast.com