Once again, my dad came to the rescue. He knew of a marine hardware store in Bellingham that had shelves and shelves of used boat parts. They had an entire warehouse full of random marine “junk” as far as the eye could see, or so he said.
It turned out to be quite true. I walked into what looked like an abandoned warehouse from the outside, to be greeted by what I can only describe as a room filled to the brim with items that seem to have been collected from every shipwreck throughout all of history. The air was damp, and dust particles hung still in the small beams of light that made their way down through the shelves stacked high with clutter. The smell of mildew, salt, and old wood filled the room; it made me question whether I’d walked into a warehouse, or aboard an 18th-century tall ship.
I made my way through the randomly organized layout of the shop—up and down aisles, around large barrels filled with oars, spars, and harpoons, ducking underneath a large stuffed shark hanging from the ceiling—and eventually found the owner. I asked him if he had a transmission for my specific Volvo diesel. He scratched his head and walked back into a narrow aisle of shelves.
After moving a few boxes around he said, “Ha! Here it is.”
It was sitting behind a cardboard box on the third shelf up. He had to use a stool to reach that height, and a headlamp to see back into the dark area of shelving. It felt a bit like watching a film in which a wizard combed through the dusty shelves of a library in search of an old book or scroll. I’ll never know how he managed to remember, even remotely, the location of that spare part—but I don’t care.
He had the transmission.
After trading the very limited balance of my bank account in return for an old hunk of metal and moving parts, we returned to the boat. I used a standard come-along to lift the engine into the saloon and began the task of swapping the transmissions.
It took a couple of days to button the whole thing back up, but we managed. We got the engine set back into place, cleaned up the saloon, fired her up, and took her out for a quick motor around the harbor. All fixed. Well, almost. I had to make my own gasket for the transmission, and I’m not sure if I messed that up, but I never really got a good seal after putting it together—the transmission seemed to always have a very slow leak. It wasn’t enough to notice a drip, but after a week or so, you could wipe your hand along the bottom of the seal and feel a small amount of fluid. Bah!.
Once I knew that she was capable of getting out and about, I didn’t waste any time. My brother and I sat down with a chart of Puget Sound and plotted our trip. We planned to do a simple circumnavigation of Whidbey Island. I had lived on Whidbey for 4 years prior to my time in service and had never seen the southern coast. Curiosity once again got the best of me. I anticipated that it would take around 3 days. We weren’t in any rush. We hit the grocery store and bought enough food to feed us all for a week, topped off our fuel and water tanks, and had a good laugh at my brother falling off the fuel dock.
We departed the Oak Harbor Marina at 2 pm that day, just as Josh began to dry—to his credit, after falling off he bounced back up so fast that I don’t believe his wallet or phone even got wet. Now that’s talent.
I was determined to begin our adventures aboard. We headed south toward Langley, over a stretch of water called Saratoga Passage, between the eastern shore of Whidbey Island and the western shore of Camano Island. The winds pushed us at a steady speed the entire way. We arrived in Langley that evening, anchored just outside of the marina, rowed to shore, and hit the town.
We walked the streets checking out random shops, and eventually happened upon Village Pizzeria. Yes, there was enough food on the boat for us all to eat like kings for a week, but I’m a sucker for good pizza. We stopped in, ordered a few pizzas, and headed back to the boat. On our way back it started raining. We probably looked rather comical to the locals—two grown men and 3 kids running through the streets in the rain, wearing flip-flops, and carrying pizza boxes. Once back on board, the smell of pizza and pepperoni filled the cabin. We ate till we were all filled to the brim, and watched movies late into the night. The rain eventually subsided, the water calmed, and we slept like babies in a pizza-induced coma.
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