[wp_geo_map]Lost Sole #437, found as we were going down the road leading to Manatee Springs, Florida, which is pictured in the photo below it
Sharon and I decided it was time to go down south to visit her sister Rachie. As a bonus, her other sister Aimee was also going to be down there visiting as well. At first we thought about just having Sharon go down and I keep Nora for a weekend, but it was not the time yet for such an endeavor. She has yet to even spend a night without mommy. South Florida is not exactly somewhere she could come home from very quickly if things were going terribly wrong. So I decided I would accompany her and we would drive the Ark down. Plus Rachie and her husband Donny were wanting to give us there 14 foot fishing boat because they thought we would get more use out of it than they would as they have another larger boat now.
I was extremely excited to be given this boat and was eager to go get it. I did harbor some anxiety as I have not towed a boat that far before and the weather was calling for severe thunderstorms and high winds. But I did tow a car behind our 36′ motor home for over 10,000 miles, so I do have towing experience and figured that the little boat would be a piece of cake. However, as you may know, almost never is anything ever a piece of cake when it comes to the Hamiltons and traveling.
The trip down was smooth. No incidences and Nora traveled like a veteran of the road. Well I guess there was a slight incident when we first tried to depart.
As we always do before departing, we packed up and slept out in the Ark in the driveway. I then got up around 3am to pull out, leaving Sharon and Nora to sleep. The Ark started like a champ and while it warmed up I unplugged from the house (which is a VERY important step that people who are sleep deprived can easily forget).
But when I sat in the driver’s seat to drive off, I noticed it seemed very dark in front of me. We had no headlights. They did not come on. I fooled with them for a while, turning them on and off, jiggling the switch, even opening the hood and wiggled the connections thinking there might be something loose. But to no avail. They were not coming on.
So I turned off the Ark. Which recently has not been something that happens easily. It just keeps running unless I pulled the fuel pump fuse. Which for the life of me I cannot get figured out why it won’t shut off. I had tried everything to fix it. New wires on the electrical system, new battery, I even took apart the whole steering column and installed a new ignition switch. Eventually I created a “kill-switch” on the fuel pump that I mounted to the dashboard. It worked like a charm, but still drove me crazy as I like things to all work properly.
So there I was back in bed and irritated about those headlights. I was unable to go back to sleep and it was still a few hours before daylight and I felt as if I were missing prime driving time. I kept thinking about what is going on with the electrical system, was it going to be wise to start a long trip without all systems running optimally? Sharon must have felt my uneasiness as she encouraged me to go take another look, maybe I missed something unplugged.
Then it hit me. When I changed out the ignition switch I had to lower the whole steering column, which houses the light switch, perhaps something did come unplugged! I crawled back to the driver’s area and reached under the dashboard and felt a wire harness plug just dangling. Aha! I reconnected the wires and the lights popped on! We were ready to depart.
And Like I stated earlier, the rest of the journey went smooth as the Ark glided down the road and I listened to an audiobook by my favorite author, Robert B. Parker.
Our time down at Rachie’s was great and flew by. Nora had so much fun with her aunts. She danced and played around the pool in her birthday suit almost everyday. Sharon got to spend some quality time with her sisters and I was able to get a lot of work accomplished as well.
Nora loved her new boat, which we titled “N.O.A.” which actually stands for Nora’s Other Ark :) And if you ask Nora about the boat she will tell you, “that’s my other Ark.” We did our first voyage out as just father and daughter going fishing. We didn’t catch anything, but saw manta rays playing, mullet jumping everywhere, and dolphin hunting for fish. It was a special time I’ll never forget. She is a great first mate.
Departure time had arrived. I had been so busy that week I didn’t get a chance to look over the boat travel until that day. I noticed the bearings were shot so I took each wheel off and repacked the one side, but completely replaced the bearings on the other as they were trashed. I did notice the boat was leaning on the trailer a bit to the right. I figured it was just needing some adjustment on the runners that hold it up.
After saying our goodbyes we had to stop at my friend Scooter’s house to pick up a gift he had for Nora. As soon as we pulled up to Scooter’s house, Nora exclaimed “Are we at Scooter’s house? Does he have a special gift for me?” We assume she had heard us talking about it.
Scooter is a boat builder and restoration guy by trade and like to work in fiberglass. In fact, he had hand-built the very boat we were taking home with with us. He has started building fiberglass benches and tables in different shapes such as stars, fish and butterflies. What he had for Nora was a butterfly tabletop that can be substituted for the table in the back of the Ark as well as used in the house on a stand I able going to build for it. Nora loves her table and will post a pic on Facebook once I have it installed. Thanks goes out to Scooter for such an excellent gift and addition to the Ark. We are honored to own what he calls, “my best work yet.” I just wish I was in a position to pay him what he deserves for it.
With Scooter being the person to go to about boats and such I wanted him to check out the trailer and see if he thought everything looked alright. He too noticed the boat looked to be much lower on that right side. I could tell right away it was even worse than before. It was so low now that the right tire was rubbing against the hull of the boat. So much so, that a hole had been worn in the hull by the tire. Great I thought, just got the boat and it already needs repaired. Thankfully it would be an easy fix since it was made of fiberglass, so I didn’t get too upset. We unstrapped the boat from the trailer and shifted it to the left. It looked pretty even now and we retied it down and I headed on my way thinking all was good now.
Instead of just trekking straight home on the usual route, we opted to go the back highways and stop off for the night at Manatee Springs State Park. We left in plenty of time to get there by the 8 o’clock checkin cutoff. In fact our GPS estimated us arriving around 5:00.
The sky was very dark off the the west and it was headed our way and we hit a wall of water it seemed, but then as quick as it hit, it was over. Typical Florida rainstorm.
It was about an hour up the road, just after climbing over the Sunshine Skyway Bridge on I-275, that I had someone pull up next to me honking and waving at me. Shit. I knew right away what that meant. There was a problem with the trailer. I waved thanks and looked back in my rear view mirror to see nothing but white smoke coming out from behind the Ark.
I pulled off and stopped as quick as I could. I rushed back to find that the smoke was coming from the left tire of the trailer. After inspection and troubleshooting with Scooter over the phone we diagnosed that a leaf spring had broken. Causing the frame of the trailer to drop down and come in contact with the tire where allowing a bolt to wear a half inch deep groove into the tire like it was clay on a pottery wheel. The air was thick with the smell of burning rubber. Amazingly, the tire did not catch on fire, nor was it flat. So there was hope I could get us rolling to the next exit.
I had brought my tools, but did not have a jack with me, the one with the Ark no longer worked and had been thrown out some time back and never replaced. We also did not have our bikes with us this trip, so the only choice was to walk on foot to the next exit and pray I could find a jack. I was also thinking I could unhook the boat and drive the Ark. And while I was deciding what to do a Road Ranger, a free roadside help service provided by the Florida DOT, pulled up behind me.
He offered his jack to lift up the trailer off the tire, I just needed something like a 4″ block of wood to put in there to keep the frame up until I could get to the next exit. We were on a shoreline so I hunted the waters edge for a piece of wood that may have floated up, but all I found was a rock. It was about the size I needed and flat so it would have to do. I bungee corded it to the frame. We set back down the trailer and it did indeed work. The Road Ranger led me to the next exit with his lights on so we could drive slow. I was very nervous. I kept having the image of hitting a bump and jarring loose the chunk of rock, placing the frame down again and blowing the tire. Even worse, I thought of where that rock would bounce if it did come loose. Could it go into another car behind me, possibly going through the windshield? I was sick to my stomach.
I knew there was a West Marine store, a Walmart and Home Depot coming up thanks to Scooter looking it up for me while I worked to get back on the road earlier. I could get everything I needed there, if only we could make it.
The exit was only a mile down the road but it felt like one hundred. I crept very slowly with my knuckles clenching the steering wheel. The road on this section seemed so rough, I kept hitting what seemed bigger and bigger bumps making my hold breath every time. I watch the trailer bounce up and down on each one, but the rock held in there. I watch the Road Ranger wave bye and off the exit I went. The stores were right there.
I parked and went in to that West Marine Store, but to my dismay they did not have the size leaf springs I needed but they did find some at a store that she said was just a little bit away. I did not want to drive any further but what could I do. I got in the Ark and plugged in the address to my phone and it said 8.3 miles! Her definition of a little bit away is much different than mine, but then again everything is relative. Had I been pulling a working trailer, yeah, 8 miles is nothing. But I didn’t know if I could make it out of the parking lot!
Off we went. Agin, miles seemed 10 times as long as normal. The stress was making my chest hurt. And as the road only got rougher so did the neighborhoods. We were not in the best part of town, not all out ghetto, but not exactly Beverly Hills either. My mind wondered to the scene from the movie Vacation where the Griswalds drove through the seedy town of East St. Louis and it made me laugh briefly. Until we hit another large pothole! “Dammit,” I yelled in my head on every bump we hit.
Finally we arrived. I got the parts we needed except a jack, which they have at all Walmarts, and there was a store just down the road a 1/4 mile. That parking lot would also be a great place to perform the repairs as well.
It was now 6 o’clock and there was no way we were making it to Manatee Springs by 8. So reserved ourselves to quickly fixing this and just drive through the night home.
As I started to take off the leaf springs, it became apparent this job might be harder than I thought. All the bolts on the trailer were rusted and not coming off without being cut off.
“Can we just not catch a break!” I yelled out.
But when in fact we had caught large breaks. We thankfully opted to leave in the daytime which we rarely ever do. The tire held up and did not go flat, a Road Ranger came by just at the right moment, we were able to get the exact part we needed on a saturday evening, there were storms all around us and we never got hit, and now we were in the parking lot of Walmart, a store that has everything!
I ran in and bought a Dremel. But by no means was it easy to get he bolts off with it. I worked for 30 minutes on one because the angle to get to it was absurd. Eventually I got the leaf spring off what I thought was the good side, the spring was so rusted that it pretty much disintegrated when I tried to pull it off. Another break that it did not fail as well on us.
After about 3 hours I finally finished the job. The trailer was ready to go! I was in a good mood. I had overcome this adversity and all was well. I even talked Sharon into still going to Manatee Springs and just sleep in a Walmart parking lot nearby it. It was nice because the Walmart was not a 24 hour store so the parking lot was dark and quiet.
We got up the next day and visited Manatee Springs for a very enjoyable time. The rest of the drive home was smooth sailing. Long, but smooth. I just didn’t want to push the trailer’s capabilities too much and stayed around 60mph. It felt really good to be home, and now we need to tackle the rest of the mortgage process to really be able to call it home!