carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...

The demon of the deep struck again today taking another cellphone. One hour, one very helpful communications retailer and $188 later I am still an operating business with a working mobile phone.

Tomorrow brings an early morning with a crack-of-dawn run up to Boston with the boat to replace a failing lower unit (gearcase, gears... everything that sticks down into the water) and fuel pumps on both engines.

QuickBooks has proven to have a steep learning curve. I'm managing basically, but an accountant has agreed to come help me with the finer points of taxation and accounting for a nominal fee.

Everything would be just fine if I hadn't left my half-bottle of root beer down on the boat...

6pm update: I donned my dive gear and went in the water following a line attached to a weight I had lowered near the spot where the phone went in the water. At the surface visibility was barely more than two feet but as I got closer to the bottom things opened up quite a bit. The phone was resting about twelve inches from the weight. I returned to the surface triumphant. Even though the phone spent a couple of hours in salt water, Drew and I are going to try some old military voodoo tricks of the trade to see if we can revive the phone (a rubbing alcohol soak for a few days displaces the water). It wouldn't hurt to have a backup anyway...

My brother Aaron competed in the 2004 Thistle Atlantic Coast Championship this weekend held at Cottage Park Yacht Club in Winthrop, MA. He raced with some friends from Kansas City, MO. They did quite well.

It's tough to write anything meaningful here when so much goes on that it's next to impossible to really break it all down into a comprehendable post.

This weekend was a long and tough few days. I'll mention of few of the highlights, if you can call them highlights...

I spent 18 hours on the boat on Saturday; 7am to 1am and I was towing much of that time.

I ran out to Provincetown three times to tow broken boats back to the South Shore; twice into Green Harbor and once into Scituate.

I towed a boat into Barnstable Harbor for the first time. Both this tow and another I did into the Cape Cod Canal (Sandwich Marina) were the first times I had been to these places. It's too bad it was at night and I couldn't really see anything.

I found out that my boat only has fuel in the tank for twelve hours of hard towing. It's a good thing I carry extra fuel in gas cans.

I assisted a seventy six foot offshore lobster boat into the Cape Cod Canal. It could only turn its rudder a couple of degrees each way and therefore needed help turning around in the six knot current in order to dock at the Sandwich Marina for repairs.

I got numerous "Yay, Sea Tow!" cheers and received one middle finger. It's the nature of this business to be both loved (when they're broken down and need help) and to be hated (after having to pay a few dollars for service to a stricken boater provided professionally and expeditiously).

And then on the seventh day... he rested.

In lieu of posting a photo, I'll share what one day's worth of notes looks like from the pad of paper I keep in front of me on the boat. It's various scribblings of phone numbers, times, names, positions (latitude and longitude), etc.

I'll take you through one of them: Look where I wrote 1155. That call came in just before noon for a red, twenty foot SeaCraft boat with three POB (People On Board). I didn't write the position down which probably means it was somewhere I could remember easily, like Gurnet Point or at the Spit. In fact, now I remember, they were at the Spit, yeah.

July 4th weekend has, for the past several years, been the true beginning of the summer with regards to my type of work. Between Memorial Day and the 4th people scramble to get their boats in the water and it's often on their first day out when their boat decides to break down. Then, on the holiday weekend of the 4th, everyone gets out on the water, with boats loaded to the gills with coolers and little kids. Here I was, this past weekend, facing a new challenge and facing it alone. I had no backup, no help and a million boaters out on the water threatening to break down, run out of gas, run their batteries dead, run aground, crash or otherwise get in trouble.

Both Friday and Saturday started with the phone ringing before the clock hit seven AM. Sunday's call was only for a boat out of fuel a few miles down the coast towards Plymouth, but Saturday's morning job was for a boat several miles east of Race Point, Provincetown. That's out BEYOND the end of Cape Cod for those not looking at a map. Fortunately it was a straight twenty-three mile shot out from Green Harbor and, running at 27.5 knots, I arrived just over an hour. Then for the long, slow tow back to Green Harbor which took just under four hours. There's nothing like a five plus hour, offshore job from a paying customer all before noon on a holiday weekend.

I figured I had used some karma points by getting that long, paying tow so I needed to earn some points back. After dropping those guys off at the boat ramp I picked up a small broken down dinghy with a man and his two little kids and towed them the 200 feet back to the dock in front of a crowd of hecklers on the town dock. They were making remarks about the bill I was going to stick to this guy. I quieted the jeering when I told the crowd that there was no charge. How could I charge a guy who was only a few feet from home anyway?

I'm not sure how the karma thing worked out. As I pushed the little boat towards the dock the entire weekend took a turn for the worse when my cellphone squeezed out of my lifejacket pocket and escaped to the bottom of the harbor. Everything froze and my heart stopped. How was I supposed to get dispatched to Sea Tow calls? How was I going to keep in touch with Sea Tow Boston Dispatch or the Sea Tow International call center in New York? How was I going to verify customer's credit cards on the water and away from my credit card terminal back in the office? Ugh! The stress and frustration I went through during the rest of the weekend is not really worth explaining except to say that I managed to cope and Sea Tow members continued to get served the "Peace of Mind on the Water" for which Sea Tow in known.

Note: No photos lately; I just haven't had time to take any.