The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

We're back from our family weekend getaway. It's probably not stepping out on too long a limb to say we'd all give the weekend mixed reviews. Let's start with the good, shall we? Obviously, it was good to get together for this annual gathering. We were expecting rain on Friday, and then improving weather through the weekend. We arrived to big puffy white clouds.

A flotilla of Canada geese were there to welcome us.

You might remember we rented this same floating home just above Willamette Falls for our family get-together last year. In my post following last year's gathering, I wrote quite a bit about the waterfalls and about the area. We were in Oregon City, which is historically significant because it marked the end of the Oregon Trail. If you're interested in reading more about the area and seeing more pictures, I invite you to click here to read last year's post.

We were expecting rain, but none came. The brooding skies made for some pretty sunset shots. Looking toward Willamette Falls, we saw this:

Looking in the other direction, we saw this:

Since we were expecting rain, we waited until Saturday morning to put the boat in the water. This required at least two of us, and so Mike, Erik, and I took off to do that. When we arrived back at the house, we found Matthew, Lyndsay, and Mae having a little tea party. Both Lyndsay and Mae are tea connoisseurs, and Lyndsay had an interesting collection of teas with her.

Here's something I haven't seen before. This one consisted of a hollowed out Mandarin orange skin. It had a paper cap over the opening, and inside there was tea. The tea is steeped inside the Mandarin skin, giving the tea a slightly orange flavor.

We went to a local brewpub for some lunch. While there, we made three attempts to get a family picture. I set the camera up on the table beside us and then used the timed shutter release to get all of us. In three tries, we didn't manage to get all of us in the shot. Here, Matthew's hat was the culprit.

So, he took off his hat, but then we missed Matthew in both of the next two shots. Oh well.

When we got back to the house, we all took naps, and then decided it was time for a boating excursion. This was where things got bad. As we motored away from the house, I snapped this picture. You can see we're staying in the house indicated with an arrow. The houses on either side of us are rentals, and the rest are private residences.

Things were going along fine as we headed up the river. The worst we could say was that we were getting a little windblown.

I took this picture of Matthew, aka Guatemala Man. It looked like a good social media profile picture to me, but we tried again after he adjusted his hood to uncover some of his face.

I was lining up to take the picture, and had the camera in front of my face with my finger poised over the shutter release when

Crrrrrrrrruuuunnnnnnchhhhhhh!

Here's the picture I took in the moment.

Holy $h*t!!! What just happened? We were stopped dead in the water, having hit an unseen submerged object. Mike turned off the engine instantly when we hit. We were all a little stunned, although no one was injured. Fortunately, we weren't going very fast. After ascertaining that everyone was okay, I started wondering about the boat, and I said to Mike, "Are we okay?" And he said, "Oh, yes, we're okay." And for whatever reason, I couldn't get my mouth to say the right words to convey my concern, and so I asked again, "But...are we okay?" And I'm worrying about the integrity of the boat...in other words, are we sinking? And finally, Erik came up with the right words, "Are we taking on water?" YES!!! YES, WE WERE!!!

Well, as luck would have it, we'd just passed by a Clackamas County Sheriff river patrol boat, and so we headed back, the engine vibrating badly, and told them what was happening. Here, I can't say enough good things about their professionalism. They accompanied us to the boat launch, and then gave Mike a ride back to the house so that he could get the truck and trailer. But this was about a 20-30 minute turn-around. In the meantime, they handed Matthew a manual bilge pump. He went to work with that while Erik went to work sucking up water with the Super Soaker water toy we had on board. Together, they helped the boat's own bilge pump keep the boat afloat until Mike could get back with the trailer.

Lyndsay took over for Erik at one point. The Super Soaker took a lot more muscle than the bilge pump, which was intended for this purpose. Matthew was able to continue pumping for the duration.

We managed to save the boat and get it out of the water, where we waited around a half hour for the remaining water to drain from the hull of the boat. And here's where it got ugly. Checking the damage underneath, we discovered that some skegs on the bottom were torn loose, and that's where the leak was. It could have been so much worse. The damage is confined to the flat bottom portion of the boat, rather than the section that forms a "V".

Mike says this portion will be much easier to repair. Nevertheless, the propeller and drive shaft are also damaged. Until we can get it to a shop for repair, we won't know the full extent of the damage. And that brings me back to the good. Fortunately, this is covered by insurance. It's a bummer to have the boat damaged before summer has even arrived. We're hopeful repairs can be done quickly, but we'll have to get this all figured out.

With all that manual pumping of water, everyone was pretty hungry by the time we'd settled ourselves into this new reality. It was time to smoke some salmon. Copper River Salmon was available at our local grocery store this past week, and so I picked up two big fillets. Erik concocted two delicious rubs, and he and Mike smoked and grilled them together.

One of the things I love most about these get-togethers is our devotion to good food and good eating. Here, the two barbecue and smoker chefs discuss the finer points of smoker food.

When it was ready for eating, it looked like this. We cut it into smaller pieces. Mae provided a couple of sides, and we had quite a feast.

Sunday morning, we decided to check out the farmers market nearby.

There was something for everyone there. We had breakfast and then just wandered around. There were some beautiful flowers. I've never seen calla lilies in so many pretty colors.

Mike and I were looking at the strawberries when I got the idea to make some strawberry ice cream.

We picked up a half flat, and I'll get after those today. These are Oregon berries. Aren't they beautiful?

With boating out, I had plenty of time for slow-stitching, and I finished off the July heart.

I'm nearly finished with the August heart too, and that's what I'll be working on next.

There's so much to do today it isn't even funny. Of course, I need to get some things done outside...some watering, filling the bird feeders, checking the greenhouse. I have sunflowers that absolutely must get planted within the next few days or there's going to be trouble afoot. But first, I need to figure out what we're going to eat for the next couple of nights, and I'll have to make a trip into town. So...time's a-wastin'. Better get going.