Actually, Monday was a bit of a horror showed, covering my launch driver's shift that is. It was an infamous "3 H" day . . . . hazy, hot & humid. My shift ran 9 to 5 and as I got to the club, I got a call from Wayne who is Launch Chairperson this year. He shared with me that the Launch was out of service. evidently, towards the end of the day Sunday, when checking the transmission fluid, the driver discovered it was contaminated with water. this is not a good thing and until the solution to the problem was discovered, we would have to use one of the skiffs. The skiffs are small, flat-bottomed boats that can only be steered when the prop is engaged. No rudder, and as a result they are really, really difficult to maneuver at slow speeds. They also have low free-board which means that getting i n at the dock is difficult and getting out and onto or off-of a normal sailboat is an adventure. Lack of slow speed maneuverability also means that the odds of seriously whacking in to a boat is quite high. It was going to be a fun day!
Quite naturally, someone was waiting to used the launch as soon as I got there. We went down to the launch dock, got into the skiff and started out . . .sort of. Having untied the skiff and started the motor, I gave the outboard some gas and we moved away from the dock, extremely slowly. When we had drifted way from the dock, I discovered that the prop had disappeared from the outboard and we were just drifting.
As luck would have it, we were drifting toward the second skiff which was on a mooring. It took a little hand paddling but eventually we got to it and after making sure its engine had a prope, I transferred the fuel, attached the "broken skiff " to the mooring, detached the working skiff and went about my shift. Basically, I ended up using the "back-up to the back-up" launch.
Luckily, they were able to get the real launch up and running but not until my shift was at an end. O, it was fun.
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