Oh no, not again!

You will find this hard to believe, but pictures don't lie. Yes, we had to get towed again (good thing we have unlimited towing from Boat US!). Yes, we hit something again. Yes, we bent the rudder again (no, not the same rudder, the replacement rudder). This time we also did some damage to our feathering prop. The boat is in a yard in Virginia (the copycat Virginia), in Chesapeake City, at about mile 17 on the ICW. We are home in Holly Springs. We have decided that we have had enough of boating vacations for this year, and are taking a vacation from the boat. Not that we actually had much choice--the yard won't even haul the boat until next week, and we do not have a third rudder waiting.

We were cruising up the ICW, trying to make the bridge opening at Centerville before everything closes down for rush hour. And THUNK. Thunk. THUNK THUNK. We hit a submerged log, we think, which then rolled back to do it's thing on the propeller, we think, then the rudder, we think. Anyway, we ended up on the side of the ICW at 4pm in the heat. We could hardly see the rudder in the brown colored water, but it wasn't right. And there was no prop response to either forward or reverse. I tried to raise Tow Boat on Ch16, but there was no reply. So I called the 1-800 number (we had great cell service, although we hadn't seen any development in hours). The woman who answered wanted to know what city we were in. I repeated that we were at MM17 on the ICW. She asked for our gps coordinates, but when I read them, she said are you on land? NO. Are you in South Mills? I DON'T KNOW--ALL I SEE ARE TREES AND WATER. Abby and Leah played mancala and Uno while we waited.

Tow Boat arrived at 6pm, and towed us to the Atlantic Yacht Basin where we spent the night. All of the people we encountered there, and at Tow Boat, were very nice and helpful. Our TowBoat captain even managed to parallel dock our 39' boat in a 45' spot without any help from our boat. Pretty good driving.

Today we rented a car, drove to Oriental to pick up our van, and headed home. Tomorrow we will do NOTHING, and then worry about the rest of our vacation after that.