🙋 October 9

 🙋  Hello Readers

Saturday, I left early for the Q'. I arrived and walked in on breakfast for the little ones. So, for a pleasant hour or more, I saw life as you cater to two young girls.
Eventually, I made my way down to the bassboat. I had brought drills, power tools for cutting metal, full expecting to alter the support bracket of the outboard. The guys joined me and we tried to evaluate the problem [ their first look ]. 
The consensus was to lower the mounting bracket and see if the screw became more visible. We went for lunch and decided to tackle the lowering job after the young ones took their nap.

Our neighbour at the Q' is a long time boater and wholesale salesperson for outboards. He offered to come down and check.

He quickly determined our well thought plan was not viable. W/ his help, I raised the motor and in doing this the piston assembly moved back from the support bracket AND, yes the screw  was visible and available. Yeah !

We tinkered w/ the controls and added more fluid but the best we could obtain was a partial raising and lowering. Enough to use the boat but overall pitiful range. The obviou solution to everyone but me was ' get the boat trailered and to a mechanic '.
Truth be told, I had been working to this for 3 years.Two years ago, D.. the next door neighbour at home had spent a day getting the trailer ready for use. We bought new tires and had the trailer checked for road worthiness.

Thus, when the topic of trailering came up, I had my doubts. The guys undaunted pitched right in. We filled the tires and corrected some maintenance problems. The trailer lights didn't turn on. We fiddled and got them working. Luckily [ or preparedly ] I had brought everything that we needed to work on the trailer.

I drove the boat to the launchramp, four miles away.

Yes, the bassboat was on the trailer. A.. reached out to an independent fellow who could do the work on the hydraulic system [ in fact, he was working on two similar engines in his yard ]

Today, I borught the boat back to the city and the mechanic.

Relieved and grateful, I headed home

Oh. all that worrying and w/ mega help from a team of folks - job done.

Now, the reason that I had been prepping the trailer was not the hydraulic system but the lower gear case that was suspected of leaking water. By putting off the trailering [ or failing to bring the boat to a mechanic ] possibly, I've saved a trip to the mechanic.

We shall see said the Zen Master