Finally, some rain

This weekend we continued to clean up the boat and get ready to leave. It was nice to get back on the bridge and start the cleanup. If you've read earlier posts of the blog, you may remember that the helm on the bridge failed all by itself some time after the boat was put into the shed for the winter. "Failed" means that the seals stopped sealing and that let about a pint of hydraulic fluid drip down onto the floor. Over time, it slowly ran down across the floor and out under the side of the bridge itself. We got down on our knees and applied our favorite cleaner, "Magic Roll Off" and it allowed us to wipe up the hydraulic fluid up immediately. Good stuff.

 Today (Sunday) it finally rained, which turned the very dusty boatyard into a very muddy one. Despite that, we vacuumed the inside of the cabin, put all of our tools away and got things ship-shape. There is no electricity on the docks yet but we used our little Yamaha generator to power the vac and the battery charger, which showed both battery banks to be fully charged.

The weather is going to be pretty bad over the next few days but that won't last forever and soon we'll be out of here.

 There are no floating Aids to Navigation out yet on the upper Connecticut River and that can be a cause for concern if you don't know the river well or if you don't pay close attention to your chart plotter. On Saturday, a 52 ft. sportfisherman left Yankee Boat Yard (next door to Portland Riverside, where we are) and drove over Mouse Island Bar. Luckily, he wasn't going too fast and only took out the props and shafts. We've pointed a little red arrow at the rocks on the bar in this chart. Red "86" normally keeps you off the rocks but not at this time of year.

The rocks are just below the surface and they are well known to just about everyone who boats in the upper river. Well, almost everyone. At about 3 PM on Saturday, a 48 ft. SeaRay left Portland Riverside and guess what?  He also hit Mouse Island and did some serious damage to his props and shafts. They towed him back in.

That's the boat and unfortunately, it's going to be around Portland Riverside for a lot longer than the owner thought.