Second Flood in a Month

Yesterday morning, in the pissing down rain, we got the call… “Time to go”.  It was our friend Ryan letting us know we were in for further flooding and it was time to head down river as the current was moving fast and debris was again on the attack.

We started the motor and lifted the anchor.  Well… we tried to lift the anchor but we were encountering problems.  As the current was running quickly, Michael had to be at the helm to steer so Grace and I were on anchor duty.  After much effort and slow progress we got our chain up far enough to see a push bike and crab pot tangled around our chain.  Andrew from the boat yard came over in his tender and about 30 minutes later we’d offloaded our unwanted cargo.  Grace and I lifted the anchor and Michael steered us down river following Ryan.

Even the dog was impressed with our find

Our motor was heating up really quickly and Michael told me to check the header tank (the bottle that holds the coolant).  I opened up the floor and the header tank was nowhere to be seen.  It had fallen out of its holder (who’d have thought cable ties wouldn’t be sufficient to hold your motor together?)  I retrieved the bottle from under the motor and held it while Michael continued down river.  After a while… “Michael, it’s bubbling.  It’s boiling. She’s gonna blow!!!”  which wasn’t an attractive prospect considering I was holding the bloody thing.  Michael screamed at me to turn the motor off.  With a boiling header tank in one hand and no floor under me I had to climb on beds to try to cut the motor.  Finally I made it and got the motor off.  It was at this point we started to have REAL problems.  With no motor there is very limited steering and the current was pushing us straight into the riverbank.  Unfortunately there was nothing we could do to avoid becoming stuck.  Ryan was now out of sight so I called him, told him we were stuck and he came back to pull us out of our muddy prison.

Unfortunately our resting place was too shallow for Ryan to reach us, so Michael and I tied a line to our bow and Michael & I (after much debate as to whether it would be me or Jed) jumped in the dingy to take the line out to Ryan’s boat to tie on so he could pull us out.  Once we started moving (keeping the line taut so it didn’t get caught on props or debris), Kidnapped came right along with us.  Two unattended kids and limited steerage made me question my decision to leave Jed on board.  We were heading for the side of Ryan with Kidnapped’s bow right behind us.  They were going to collide.  Michael and I were in our little rubber ducky between the two and there was no doubt we would be crushed between the two.  The bow of Kidnapped finally reached Ryan’s boat but Ryan’s dad was there to grab hold to stop further progress.  This left Michael and I stuck in the small angle between the two boats. After some cajoling we freed ourselves and headed to the back of Ryan’s boat to tie off whilst Ryan’s dad held our bow at bay.

Michael got out of the dinghy and onto Ryan’s duck board.  Ryan has two 340hp motors and the wash was just too strong and flipped me straight out of the dinghy into the fast flowing flood current (my decision to leave Jed on board was now well justified).

I grabbed hold of Ryan’s dinghy (tied to the back of his boat) and realised my dinghy was fucking off down river.  Michael yelled at me for 3 days when I lost a winch handle… can you imagine if I lost a whole bloody dinghy???  I reached out with my feet and managed to slip it through the rope handle and pull it back a little closer.  I’m now looking like a walkway between the two dinghies. 

Grace was on Kidnapped, screaming and crying.  I’ve, by this stage, got my feet into the dinghy and trying to drag it closer to me against the current.  I’ve looked at Grace and called out “Don’t worry honey, I’ll be fine”.  I felt anything but fine and then I remember the crocs in the river and tried to suck my stomach in so it wasn’t in the water… no luck there!

A huge surge of effort and I managed to drag our dinghy close enough so I could actually get into it.  I sat on the floor of our dinghy, holding on to Ryan’s dinghy until Michael was finished tying us off.  I then had to drive the dinghy up closer to Ryan’s boat for Michael to get back in and return us to Kidnapped.  I sustained a little muscle damage but that’s better than the alternatives.

Ryan towed us down river and we anchored at Devil’s Elbow.  The current isn’t so fast here and the debris seems to be skirting around us.

We fixed the air leak causing us to overheat and all now seems to be in working order.

I’m trying to determine whether we are blessed… or cursed!?!