The bow thruster is fixed! The bow thruster is fixed!

Did you ever see the movie The Jerk? There's a part where Steve Martin yells, "The new phone books are here! The new phone books are here!  That's our family's favorite part.  We have often been overexcited about ordinary life.  Well, today is one of those days.  It's a red letter day for Aunt Aggie:
The bow thruster is fixed!!

Our bow thruster helps the boat turn to the left or right. This is especially important because we are a single engine trawler.  With just one engine, turning to the right is difficult.  Turning at all is a slow process with lots of backing up and stopping and asking for forgiveness as we come close to other boats and docks.

The bow thruster stopped working as we entered Lock #45 on the Trent Severn Waterway before we entered Georgian Bay, July 28.  So we have not had it for Georgian Bay, the North Channel and Lake Michigan.  That's a lot of entering marinas and asking for a left turn into a slip and help, please.

Today Arch came to our boat and reinstalled the bow thruster.  He just showed up at 3:30 pm, following a huge rain storm.  We had tried to make an appointment with Arch since last week.  However, he said he would try to come this afternoon, but we could not tie him down to a time.  We were so happy to see him.  I was oozing Southern charm to no effect.  He was a gruff, all business kind of guy.  Those people make me nervous.  Arch and George retired to our bedroom to look at the situation.  (The bow thruster is located beneath our bed.  Get those heads out of the sewer!)

I stood out on the cockpit in a light rain.  I could not help.  I could not read or use the computer.  I would be in the way if I did any activities.  So I decided to go for a walk.  I took our extra vegetables and fruit and set out to visit Donadee and Wayne on Always Home.  On the way I went by the bathroom and the laundry room. I was trying to kill time.  So I read the start of a Judy Blume book, a detective story, and several sections of The Truth about Cruises, an outdated tell all about tipping and sex and bad passengers on cruises.  I finally made my way to Always Home, and Wayne said George was looking for me.  George could not find the gear oil we had bought a couple of weeks ago.

I went quickly back to the boat.  Hooray!  Yippee!  The bow thruster was fixed and working.  We needed to oil it.  We need to check it after 5 - 10 hours of use.  Arch was much more relaxed by this point.  George paid him and thanked him, and we are celebrating now with gin and tonic.  Woohoo!

Tomorrow we are going to leave Aunt Aggie and go to Atlanta for a week.  It will be a short week in which we get to see Addie, Zoe (our granddaughters), Geva (George's mother), Katherine (my sister) and some friends.  The blog will stop for a week.  Please come back and read about our adventure down the inland rivers, starting September 18.

Note:  I'm sorry there are no photos today.  I was scared to ask Arch if I could take his picture.