Today we all got a brief vacation from winter. The weather was so warm and sunny that I recruited a date to go to Langley for lunch with me. Last night I gathered up all my gear and reinstalled the batteries in the boat. I got up early today and let the Whaler out of the barn. We paid our launch fee, launched the boat and started up the engine. Right as my date was about to hop in and push away from dock, I noticed that the steering was completely jammed. I shut down the engine and spent half an hour trying to troubleshoot the problem, to no avail. Our plans of a lovely day on the water were dashed. Since I had put it in salt water, I still had to wash the boat and flush the engine when I got home. My date was not impressed, and we never went out again.
After the last time the boat was worked on last fall, I did notice that the steering felt a little sticky. I don’t know if this was caused by some corrosion from three months in storage, or if it had something to do with the work that was last done. In any case, I’m going to have to drag it down to Seattle yet again for another warranty repair. I was so bummed to lose such a rare and lovely winter boating day. It could have been worse though… If we had pushed away from the dock and then discovered that we couldn’t steer, we might have gotten ourselves in a sticky situation. Fortunately I realized it just in time.
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