by Robin
We left our area about 10:00 am on Tues morning. It was a nice drive over to Crystal River area.
Our first goal was to drop the boat into the water and tie it up to the dock slip that we rented for three days. At this point, we were the only ones there.
This little marina/watersports shop held Manatee, Scallop & Spring Tours every morning. They were very nice here.
We checked into our room and had a beautiful view of these palm trees & the pool.
After grabbing an early dinner/late, late lunch, the boys could think of nothing else but getting into the pool. I caught my youngest suspended in the air. Looks a little bit like he's walking on water.
Day 2, we were ready to leave the docks and find the Gulf of Mexico & scallops.
We all had fresh faces and big dreams for our day. Below is me w/ Tiki.
Jack is happy too even with sweat on his brow. The heat was unbelieveable this day.
We enjoyed seeing the wildlife as we made it through the cut inlet that dumped into Crystal River.
At one point, we hit bottom, but Jack raised the engine and we sailed through without running fully aground. We eventually made it out to the Gulf of Mexico. The water is SOOOO shallow that you have to follow this channel all the way out if you're in a bigger boat. We put "First Choice" at full speed and then...... it happened. A weird sound. I hate weird sounds. We've been so very blessed w/ our Opti-Max, but I remember those bad sounds from the original engine that came w/ our boat. Our r.p.m.s increased for no reason. Jack said we had to turn around and head back in or risk being stuck in the water. I cannot express the sadness of being 1.5 mi from scallops and having to turn around.
I cried & prayed a little on the way back in. I thought our entire vacation was over and even worse, our engine may have damage that could exceed $1000, $1200 or worse, $1500. I had to really encourage myself by repeating faith Scriptures and finding trust in Him. Jack gets the idea to stop at the marina that we passed on the way out. It turned out to be a very wise decision to make. We weren't there 5 minutes and the boat was up & out of the water.
This is never a good picture to take on your vacation. It still makes me want to cry just thinking of those feelings of despair. What I didn't know was that they were all pretty happy to see so very little damage and the prop was "spun", which was suppose to be an easy $45 fix. The only problem was that our prop needed to shipped off for the repair and couldn't be done on the spot by these mechanics. So, we bought an emergency spare propeller.
We were back on our way in less than 20 minutes. We headed back out to towards the Gulf of Mexico. THANK YOU TWIN RIVERS MARINA!!! You're the BEST!!!!
Story to be continued............
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