I took the boat down to the river for a good run and test out the charging system. All was going well, the boat flies with only one person in it. I went upstream till the 8 knot signs so I was out of the way of all the skiers. About 2mins after passing the 8 knot sign the engine just stopped and there was some smoke coming out of it. I took the cover off and nearly burnt my hand. It was cooked and seized. I grabbed the towel and wrenched the flywheel and luckily was able to free the seize. I briefly fired it up again and it was obvious that there was no water pumping through. Bugger.

It was about 5:40pm and plenty of skiers in the distance so I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to get a tow back to the boat ramp. I chucked the anchor in and relaxed for a bit. Well… I had one fag fly passed me at full speed even though I had the engine cover off and was waving to him. He just kept on going, prick. Another guy towing his kids didn’t even look at me as he went passed. I figured I’d start rowing even though I was pretty far away from the boat ramp it was about all I could do. Rowing wasn’t very successful as there was a slight breeze against me. After about an hours worth of paddling I made it roughly 100m.

It was an interesting experience being stranded on the water. As the sun started to set I began thinking what it would be like to spend the night on the boat. It was relatively hot so I figured a towel and life jackets would be adequate for something to sleep on. The fish started jumping around me, I might have found a good fishing spot. I started calculating what supplies I had on the boat, whether it would be possible to catch something (highly doubt it as we never catch anything) and if I needed to get a fire going how I’d go about that.

Anyway around 8:00pm some guys came passed who had been out fishing, they were happy to give me a lift. The trip back to the ramp was pretty slow but I was grateful for the tow. As I kicked back I snapped these photos on my phone.

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