Insert explanation to question
These were old friends, very valued/ They had combined a vacation with the offer to help us get the boat home. Yes... we wanted to kill him several times along the way. We are only human after all. I tempered this urge with the memory of me, signing on to things that turned out to be not at all what I'd expected. All he had stronger than water was Pepsi Diet. It was just his way of dealing with being somewhere he didn't want to be I think.
I am losing my eyesight to disease. Quite by chance, my wife suffered a detached retina just prior to leaving on the trip. Add to that mix the fact that he was not very mechanical & goofed every other job assigned to him. Most of the time, out in the channel, he did an adequate job of piloting. Usually he had another person sitting next to him, doing the navigation/barge watch' I was the engineer, porter & general step & fetch. One of the differences between lake & cruising is the long, all day JOB of wrestling the wheel back & forth, keeping a course. As we've heard about sailing, that it's 1/3 boredom, 1/3 excitement & 1/3 sheer terror. Well 12 hr river travel fits the bill with the exception of the terror.
Females do fine on this type of travel. My friend’s wife actually was the smoothest pilot of us all. Both girls really got into the navigation program on the computer. My wife became the expert @ reading & interpreting the forward looking sonar, She was great on debris watch & reading the eddies. Engines & systems were my balywig.
That left the wheel to "zone man". He grilled a good burger too. As it turned out after a few days, he became the most alert to barge traffic. Wonder why.
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