There's a hole in my boat

Posted by Peter on 20 November 2010 | 0 Comments

The River Queen spring saga continues...who would own a boat? This week we sprung a leak!

We’re back operating now but we did close down for the first part of the week. (After all, it wouldn’t do for The River Queen to sink with passengers on board. The lazy, languid cruise experience might be compromised.)

We had to beach the boat down river, near Cloudy Bay, and then wait for the tide to go out in order to inspect the hull. This isn’t quite as easy as it might sound. Beaching the boat on the muddy banks is fraught with hazards. We have to push the boat into the bank at high tide, which is precisely when we can’t see if there are any nasties on the river bed, waiting for us to land on. Then we have to deal with any side wind, which wants to push the boat around and not let us beach at the angle we choose. Once we’re stranded on the mud and the tide recedes, we still have to dig out some mud to access the bow-thruster housing and do the work – all before the tide starts to come back in. Finally we need to pull off the mud: not such a straightforward exercise in a flat-bottomed boat, with a huge amount of suction to overcome.

 

So Dylan (our skipper) and I were down river for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week, each day playing games with the tide and the wind. Fortunately it looks like we won. The good news is that the leak wasn’t due to a crack in the weld, which was our best guess, but simply a loose screw in the bow-thruster housing. Grateful for small mercies, we packed up and headed up river to our berth as soon as the work could be done – still took a few days though. I took some photos while we were there, so I’ll put these up on the website too, if I can work out how!

While all this has been happening, summer has snuck up on us and arrived in a haze of heat. I remember it being hot on the 13th because that was my 50th birthday and the helped me to celebrate by pushing me in the river. It was actually pretty refreshing, although no one else opted to join me.

Warm weather in this hemisphere tells us that Christmas can’t be far away. This weekend sees our first Christmas Party cruise of the season – Westpac Bank are coming on board for a murder mystery cruise. Sounds fun.

On Sunday we have an engagement party for Brooke and Chris – so congratulations to them. I’m sure it’ll be an engagement party to remember.

Monday next week we are running a special cruise, in association with the Clubs of Marlborough, for local accommodation providers. The idea is to showcase the facilities, particularly the dining options in the Clubs building and to give everyone a lovely time on the boat to remind them of all The River Queen has to offer. Most local accommodation folk have already been on board but we’re always happy to welcome people back. (If you work in the industry and haven’t yet made it on a cruise, just give me a yell and we’ll see what we can arrange).

And if you’re just visiting Blenheim and looking for something to do, especially something which showcases the Marlborough region in terms of food, drink and scenery, then come and look us up.

All the best

Peter