Marilyn and I were really looking forward to meeting many of you who we have become acquainted with through your postings on this site. Lake Powell was only a four hour drive from our home, so we left on Wednesday with great anticipation and a spirit of adventure for our first C-Brat gathering on our new little boat to Lake Powell.
It was, shall we say, an eventful experience. The sleeping berth was a bit tight in the little R-21, but we slept in it for three nights without bruised shins or ribs. Launching and retrieving single handed (Marilyn is still a bit hesitant to participate) wasn't too bad. The walk up and down those long ramps because of the low water level was work....but good for me.
After launching from the Wahweap marina and enjoying a few glorious hours of cruising, we saw a C-Dory boat. It was Chris on the Rena Verde. I hailed him on the VHF and we learned there were a bunch of fellow C-Brats gathered at Oak Canyon earlier in the week, but everyone had then broken off all over the place. In mid-conversation, my radio went dead. Weird! I figured it was probably a blown fuse and we finished our conversation by hand signals and yelling. I thought I'd easily get it back up and running after we stopped for the night, besides, I had my Garmin GPS and my cell phone.
We cruised for an hour or two more then found a beautiful island that had a secluded sandy beach in Padre Bay. We anchored there and took Teaco, our brave little Chihuahua for a much appreciated potty break. The porta-potti worked just fine, but it did seem to be filling up quite quickly. Marilyn DOES drink a lot of water.
The next day after fiddling with the VHF radio to no avail, we thought we'd do some exploring further up the lake to find the rest of the C-Brats and find a dump station for the porta-potti. The Garmin GPS was guiding me with accurate precision and depth sounding, then POOF! No Garmin. Dead as road kill. Now I was getting a bit "tense", as I had heard about the folks who damaged their props, hulls, etc., from unexpected outcroppings at Lake Powell, due to it's current low water level. Now we were out there without VHF or GPS, no cell phone reception and WITH a quickly-filling porta-potti.
With much regret, we decided to curtail the rest of our trip and headed back toward the Marina where we had put in. (About a 5 hour cruise). Then just to add a bit of extra stress to my already frayed nerves, EVERYTHING except the engine quit! Bow thruster, horn, bilge pump, water pump, etc. All dead!
We finally made it to within a few miles of the marina, where I was able to pick up a bit of cell phone reception. I called Andrew at the Ranger factory and we went through all the possibilities...bad fuses, battery connections, charger, etc. When all was checked out, Andrew said, "You have a bad battery." Bad battery?! I have less than 10 hours on this boat and I have a bad battery?! Fortunately for us, it was a battery and not the alternator, so it was not threatening the function of the engine. Unfortunately for us, that bad battery turned our four day trip into an overnighter. We had some alternatives like getting a new battery at the marina, etc., but by this time, we were pretty tired from the ordeal. Being newbies and all, we thought the best thing to do was get off the water and try again another day.
So, that's a "short" review of our first solo boating trip. The funny part is, we can't wait to go again. Today, I am picking up a new battery, a bucket of extra fuses, voltmeter and maybe some paddles, so we'll soon be out threatening other boaters on another body of water. San Diego may be next. Alert the Navy!
We're so sorry we didn't get to meet those of you who were at this gathering, but hopefully next time, we'll catch up to you.
I posted a few pics in an album of our Lake Powell adventure.
