Every day has been an adventure on this trip, it seems, and not always the fun kind.
On Saturday Tom Bailey, the dockmaster of the KOA marina in Sugarloaf, offered to help me get the boat on the trailer at a nearby marina with a longer and steeper ramp than the KOA offered. Even though Tom was piloting, we hit some coral, which bent both skegs and chewed up the props. Then when we got to the ramp, we discovered that the low clearance of the hitch (the trailer was not set up properly as the coupler rides 3" or so too low) resulted in my trailer jack clearing the ramp breakover by less than an inch. The first time we tried to pull the boat out, the truck smoked the tires in 2WD, so I shifted to 4WD and at the same time Tom applied maximum throttle to the Tom Cat, and that did the trick.
Even though we did not have good weather in the Keys, I can't say enough about how well the folks at the Sugarloaf KOA treated us, both in the campground proper and the marina. They have about 20 small, C-Dory size slips and although it is not cheap (about the same as an RV spot), I think they definitely gave good value for the money. They are not listed in any of the cruising guides I have been using, so keep them in mind if you are cruising the Keys. Note that they do have gas but do not have a pumpout. Their ramp can probably accommodate up to a C-22.
We then pulled the Tom Cat to Naples from Sugarloaf Key and checked into the KOA there. We decided to stay two nights because we knew no business that could repair the props would be open on Sunday. The Naples KOA is also company owned, but is much more "ordinary" than the Sugarloaf Key facility, with a population age averaging a good 20 year more than the Keys. Our adventure there was on Sunday night: they offered an ice cream social followed by a movie, Firestorm. The ice cream was fine but once the movie started we realized it was not our cup of tea, as it was intended for an evangelistic Christian audience. What irritated me most about the situation was that the flyer advertising the film did not make it clear what kind of film it would be. Adding insult to injury we somehow, inadvertently, sat in two empty chairs that a couple of elderly ladies apparently felt we should have known were theirs, and they hassled Lori until we left, halfway through the film.
On Monday, thanks to Jim of the Jennykatz, we met at a local prop repair facility, that did a great job of fixing both the props and the skegs for a very reasonable price. It is Naples Propeller, 3951 Mercantile Ave, Naples (239) 261-7909. While we were waiting for Rich at Naples Prop to do his thing, we had breakfast with Jim and then went out to the house of Mike (Papillion) where Jim keeps the Jennykatz. Jim treated us to a nice ride around Naples Harbor and out into the Gulf. Jim kept telling us that we should put the boat in the water to make sure everything was OK before leaving, but we had a dinner engagement and had to tow the boat up to Pine Island where we were staying for the night, so we did not heed his advice.
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After a pleasant dinner in Estero with Robin and Monique, two friends from Salt Lake City days who now divide their time between the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin and a condo in Bonita Springs, we returned to Pine Island. In the morning we finally hooked up with Allen and Lorraine Hitchcock, owners of a new C-25. We had kept putting them off as one thing or another delayed our arrival at their house, but we finally made it. They very generously offered us the use of their 2nd dock for the duration of our time in Charlotte Harbor.
Yesterday afternoon we decided to launch the Tom Cat. Allen drove us around to check out several local launch ramps -- we chose the Punta Gorda city launch in Ponce de Leon park. It only has one lane but is nice and deep and does not have big breakover at the top of the ramp. Allen and I were aboard as Lori backed us down into the water. When we were in position, I gunned the motors in reverse. Nothing happened. Hmmmm. Time to get bumped off the trailer. Lori pulled forward, then reversed and popped us off. I engaged reverse -- and headed straight for the concrete abutments surrounding the launch ramp. I realized then that Naples Prop had installed our props "backwards". That is, because I have counter-rotating twins, the props were installed on the wrong engines and produced the opposite thrust through the water than desired. So I shoved the throttles forward and reversed away from the dock before any damage could occur.
We only had about 4 miles to go to get to Allen's dock so I decided to proceed forward -- in reverse. Allen called Bulldog, the local C-Dory dealer, who told us that we could continue with the port engine, but that we should stop using the starboard engine. Sure enough, the starboard engine was running significantly hotter than the port engine. I shut down the starboard engine and tilted it up, and we proceeded to Allen's dock slowly, and sometimes not in the straightest line, but we made it to the dock without further mishap.
This morning Lori cleaned the boat while I took the truck and trailer to a local RV shop to see if I could buy a draw bar that would raise the hitch enough to make the trailer level (when I upgraded the Tom Cat trailer hitch to 15,000 capacity, the folks at the RV shop in Mt. Vernon installed a draw bar that curved down and bolted the ball assembly to the highest set of holes. Unfortunately, this was not high enough to make the trailer ride level. When I was at Bob's in Pensacola we put a level on it and determined that the trailer should ride about 3 inches higher.) Instead of selling me a new draw bar, the RV shop reversed the draw bar and now the trailer rides almost perfectly level -- perhaps a very slight upward tilt. We will see how well it works on the next segment of our travels, back to Apalachicola.
I had previously made arrangements to store the trailer on the property of Tom Ray, the local Ranger dealer, so after the hitch work was finished, I took the trailer to Tom's and then picked up a prop wrench at West Marine. With Allen's help, we switched the props and with any luck we are good to go out tomorrow.
Hopefully we will not encounter too many more of these adventures!
