Day with Melissa

Yesterday was a day of fun and little frustrations. Melissa and I get to spend most of the day together, alone. We planned a trip to the boat and were going to take it out on our maiden voyage. However, things didn’t go quite as planned… any part of the day.

I had my shower and I was making my coffee. My current favorite coffee brand is Illy. I love it, but it only comes pre-ground. In order to use my Keurig I have to put it into this special thing. After washing it out Nyx and I look at each other. Is that water running? Sure enough, a river was coming out from under our sink. Oy. I grabbed some towels and mopped it up. It was the connection from our disposal that was leaking. I don’t do much with plumbing, as a rule. I don’t like it and it doesn’t like me. However, instead of trying to call someone on a Saturday to look at it and costing me millions of dollars, I’d just try to fix it myself. It turns out that for $2.70 I was able to get the part and with only about 3 tries, put it on right. Plumbing crisis averted.

We got the kids ready for their grandparents house. The little girls went to my mom’s and the big kids went to Melissa’s. We packed stuff for the boat and were ready to go. After dropping off we headed to Annapolis for lunch. We had Zoe’s Kitchen, a place I really like but almost never think to go too. The kids are not fans, so that could also be a reason. Good, healthy lunch.

We get to the boat and load it up. I had Melissa help me with the rigging and setup. For her first time, she didn’t seem to overwhelmed. There is a lot of new terms, but I was mostly trying to focus on the action and function. I don’t think she confident enough to do it by herself but I think she got most of it… this is when the “fun” starts.

So we have everything prepped and ready to throw lines. I start the 5 HP Honda we have and it is screaming. For a 5 HP motor it seems really loud. I turn the throttle down and still screaming. We throw lines, I put it in gear and WHAM! we are moving full tilt. I scramble to figure out why we are moving so fast, and turning the throttle and trying to get the damn thing going the right way… it didn’t work out… We are heading for the boats right across from us, I turn the wheel quick and manage to shift us into pinons instead of the boats. I throw the motor in reverse and it jumps out of the water. Things are not going as expected.

From the dock a guy was shouting at us to turn the throttle down. I showed him it wasn’t making a difference and he ran over some boats and jumped on ours. After a few second of inspection he realized the linkage/connector from the throttle to the motor were missing and the throttle linkage bar was swinging free. The carburetor was on full open with nothing controlling it. With a few tries he manually adjusted the carburetor so that we could back into our slip. He works on outboard motors she he had some idea what’s going on, but he works for a Yamaha shop and not a Honda. We spent a number of hours last night trying to figure out the part we need. We manged to find a shop that’s not super far from Harrington Harbor, but they want us to remove the motor and bring it in. If we can find the part, Eric (our rescuer) said he’s do the work for much cheaper. I’ve thrown the idea round of just rigging something up myself, but none of these options are ideal. We were on the slip for a couple more hours looking things up and getting it all packed up for the day.

We got changed into nicer cloths and were back to Annapolis for dinner. I lover French food. I think it’s one of my favorite cuisines. We found ourselves at Les Folies Brasserie. The restaurant itself was very old and stuffy. The customers were all much older, 50s, and nearly every table had someone 70+ sitting with them. It was kinda strange. I wanted to leave, but Melissa didn’t and said the place was highly rated. Apps, dinner and dessert were all actually really good. I had the escargot, crab cake and these amazing doughnut things with ice cream in it. Melissa had onion soup, rack of Rosemary lamb and Beignets”Pets de None” with Vanilla Ice Cream, and Caramel sauce. That was also quite good. I was happy I stayed.

All and all, a good day and a little adventure.