Beached

Oh yeah; it figures.  Now that we are out of the water the weather is perfect; the winds are calm and the waves are less than 1 foot.  Well the photo shows the damage.  Everybody here says that it is not so bad; not what they normally see.  The mechanics did a thorough inspection and have given everything else a clean bill of health.  Thank God.  It was interesting the way that they checked the shafts.  They clamped a thick piece of metal (approx. 6" wide x 18" long x 1/4" thick) to the rear strut then attached a magnetic micrometer (sp?) to that piece so that the sensor ran on the surface of the shaft near the end where the props used to be.  They than turned the shaft with a pipe wrench.  Both were perfect; no deviation or bend what-so-ever.  Whew, a few thousand $'s saved there.  They also checked the bearings, shaft seals, thru hauls, transmissions and everything else with equally good results.  We were lucky.  So it appears that it really was the huge swell that dropped us so far down that we touched bottom in almost 7 feet of water.  FYI Q requires 3' 10" of water in normal conditions.

So now we wait.  The props were shipped to Detroit yesterday, Tuesday and there is a week turn around.  Forunately Mackinaw City is not a bad place to be.  The Mackinaw Crossing, a neat shopping complex similar to Whistler or Mt. Tremblant, is right across the street.  The main drag, one block down, has more stores, restaurants, bars and patios.  So far, we are managing OK.  I was getting tired of the bar and pub fare so we tired a restaurant recommended by some of the locals.  It is about 10 blocks from the marina and the food was superb.  We will be going back and that is more surprising than you think because they do not serve alcohol or beer or wine or anything drinkable.  The name is Darrows, if anyone gets this way.  Everything is homemade: bread, great pies, soups, mashed potatoes, even the salad dressings are home made.

A faux pas last evening.  There was an outdoor concert next to the marina and I decided to get some carmel corn.  Well we need to save money now so I found a $2.00 coupon for carmel corn.  We only had to spend $20 on corn to get the savings.  Do you know how much $20 of carmel corn is???  I was embarrassed to cart the nearly full garbage bag home to the boat.  We will be eating corn for a couple of weeks. 

People are great here, very friendly.  The ticket seller for tours of the retired US Coast Guard Mackinaw ice breaker has a booth beside our boat.  We have waved and exchanged pleasantries with her for the last couple of days.  Last night we spoke with her about some directions and she immediately offered us her car to take into another town or use whenever we needed.  We just may take her up on the offer to get some golf in.  Don't know yet as we are planning on taking a ferry over to Mackinaw Island either tomorrow or Friday.  We still have plenty of time.

The service people have set us up pretty good here.  We are one of four boats with people living on board until the work gets done.  We have a great view; we have full power, although we cannot run the AC and we have potable water and an empty holding tank.  So we are doing fine.  We can even get 3 channels clearly on the TV so we have been catching some of the olympics later at night.
Things are not half bad after all.  I have even taken the over stressed crew off the ceiling and got her to relax a little.  It took 2 Blonde Bombshells (Malibu rum, coconut rum and pineapple juice) at the Depot and a Margarita at the Caboose to get there but she is mellow now.  I guess it is carmel corn for supper.

Bye for now.
Tom and Linda