March 27, 2000
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This morning, I arose with the sun. I have found that without curtains, the sunlight through the plentiful windows wakes me up much earlier. I quietly got out of bed, got dressed, and went up on deck. I drove us back up to Kirkland where Tina's car was parked. We decided last night, that she would take Joey to school and bring back clean clothes and take me around for work. After work, we picked up my car and she followed me down to Shilshole, where we parked the Caravan. We drove back to Kirkland in my car and drove the boat back through the locks again and pulled into Shilshole. We then took her car to my parent's house and brought back the pickup. Now it was time to test the truck. I backed the trailer into the water, and loaded the boat. I climbed back into the truck and started pulling. The truck did just fine until the last little bit of boat was still in the water. That was all it had. I tried shifting the 4-wheel drive transmission into low, but didn't know enough about it, so couldn't. I thought I had, but later I discovered that it was still in high. Without enough power to completely remove the boat from the water, I was stuck. I tried getting a run at it with no luck. Finally I climbed up in the boat, grabbed two lines, and tied the Caravan to the pickup. Together, Tina and I pulled the boat from the water. Then came the fun part. Getting it home. The truck could barely make the hills, it obviously still had some problems. I chose the shallowest hills, and the most level route I could. We did finally make it home, and had the boat trailer sink several times in the lawn trying to get it back on the cement pad in the backyard that we have been parking it on. While rocking it back and forth I heard a metallic *ping*. That was one of the transmission belts snapping. Somehow after breaking the transmission, I got the 4-wheel gearbox into low finally. Using reverse and 1 (which were all that still worked) I was able to get the boat up in one last try. Wish I had found low an hour ago. |