25-Sept-2016 First Trip Out With Little Squirt 3
Where do I start. Well. It was about 11:30 and I was putting a coat of spar urethane on the new mast for Little Squirt 3. It was forecasting rain so I had no plans to take the boat out despite the fact that it had not yet been in the water and we were running out of time. It was fairly warm weather, and did not look like rain. Also the wind had died down and seemed accepatable. I thought what the hell, and told my wife and Jeanette that we would be taking the boat out that day.
It took about a hour for Jeanette and myself to have lunch and for me to load up the boat to go. Then we were off. We drove down to the boat launch at Paddy's Pond and I put the boat in the water.
Once I put the boat in I had a lot of trouble getting the car up the hill and onto the road. At one point Jeanette told me that only 3 wheels were on the ground. I decided that I would avoid the uneven ground and holes by using the boat lauch a few feet away when I took the boat out of the water. I parked the car by the side of the road and we were off.
Myself and Jeanette took pictures of each other rowing then we followed the naming Cerimony. There's not much too it. The other two boats I did this by myself with bear. This time we did it with water. It's done like a toast. Jeanette got the honours. She raised her bottle of water and said the sacred words. "I Christen Thee Little Squirt 3". Done. Nobody is hitting any of my boats with a bottle of champaine.
Came across a couple of other boaters on the pond.
Now for the fun part. We started back about 2:30 pm. We were both tired of rowing. I guess we actually started to put the boat on the trailer about 3 PM. Well guess what. Once the boat was on the trailer the car couldn't get up the hill. It was too steep and there was too much loose gravel. Also it seems the tires were worn and weren't getting traction. I thought perhaps the car could make it up the hill if I got rid of the weight of the trailer and boat. Well I got the car up the hill but now I had the car at the top of the hill and boat with trailer at the bottum of the hill.
We struggled with a couple of ideas without sucess. Then I decided to tie a couple of cargo straps together and tie them to the pull crank at the front of the trailer. I would lift the boat and Jeanette would turn the crank. The boat moved inch by agonizing inch. Each time we got a couple of feet I would have to put rocks behind the wheels to keep the boat from rolling back down the hill. Then I would disconnect the straps from the car. run out the line from the crank as much as possable and reattach everything. At one point I tried moving the car ahead a couple of feet and adjuting the strap. I broke the triangular piece of the trailer where the trailer rests on the tounge. So back to cranking. I called my wife to let her know when we got into trouble and again when we got out of it. She says there was about half an hour between calls. Seemed like a much longer time to me and Jeanette.
Once on the top of the hill we hooked up the trailer and went home. Jeanette said at first that it had been a lousey day, but when she thought about what we had done before taking the boat out of the water we decided it had been a excellent trip.