Temp: 35
Still Hot, Hot, Hot here - but fortunately, I find that beer really helps me to have a good sleep, even when everyone else is tossing and turning. We stayed overnight at my parents place, and after breakfast, still reeling from the surreal events of the night before, we did a nice drive out to a nifty place called Xenia. What a nifty place! There's a labarynth of stones that takes about 10 minutes to walk through, and then a short walk away is "The Opa Tree", an 1,100+ year old giant of the forrest. Just steps from that is "Sanctuary", an amazingly peaceful little "temple of sorts" secreted away in the wods. You can see picture and read about the Labarynth, Opa, and Sanctuary HERE.
After Xenia, we made our way to a beach near the new Bowen Golf Course, and spent a bit of time there before heading back for lunch.
We had no sooner cracked a couple 'o' beers when Josie came barrelling up the driveway exclaiming "Chris' boat is sinking! Quick, grab buckets and rope and jump in!" My dad and I grabbed some gear and jumped in. Josie tore down to the dock, and as we rushed out, it wasn't hard to miss Chris and a few curious bystanders frantically trying to keep the boat above water. "What did you do, Chris?" I asked with a smirk...
"Some joker turned on my bait-tank pump sometime overnight, but the plug's in, so it filled the whole boat with water", he replied with a scowl, "This is NOT how I was planning to spend my hangover!"
My dad and I quickly secured one end of a rope to the dock, and looped the other end under the engine. We then reefed on it until we had the lip barely above the water level, and secured it to the dock at that level. It then only took about 10 minutes of frantic bailing by the three of us to get enough water out that the boat was again floating "on" the ocean, as opposed to "under the surface" of the ocean. Whew! That was close. Some cheekly tourist walks by and says "Ya don't see that everyday..." and keeps walking. Yeah, thanks for the help, buddy!
From there, it was fairly easy to barter a tow to shore (I'll trade you my pre-paid spot at the dock for a tow to shore!), but getting the half-full-of-water boat on to the trailer at low tide was a bit of a challenge - fortunately, getting it 3/4 on was enough so that pulling the plug and letting it drain for 10 minutes was sufficient to drain it the rest of the way. Miracle of all miracles, there was enough juice left in the previously submerged battery to get the engine raised, otherwise it would have been a pretty strenuous job to do manually.
So now Chris just has to run fresh water through the engine, and dry to dry out the lower carbourator - and hopefully the salt water doesn't corrode all the wiring throughout the boat. Yikes! What an ordeal...
So, after lunch and some chat, we were on the 5PM ferry, and back home by six. On the main floor of our house, it was 36 degrees, and on the top floor, well, it was so hot you couldn't even breath! If I had to guess, it must've been 44, bare minimum... Holy Smokes it was hot in there... we got all the windows opened and managed to get the
temperature down to 32 by 9PM, which did not make for a very comfortable sleep... but you know me, no matter how bad it gets, you'll never hear me complaining about SUMMER!