Technically, the boatyard and/or marina was closed on Monday. But. The mechanic was gracious enough to help me by watching over my shoulder while I took apart the linkage between binnacle and transmission.

The shifter on the tranny didn't feel like it was going all the way into Forward. I could reach down and flip the shifter the last little bit into forward. Also, I didn't want to believe that we had a crab pot wrapped around the propellor.

Via email, one of the Boatyard folks that knows Red Ranger well suggested I was wacky. His point was that there is no "partially into forward" kind of thing that can go wrong with the Velvet Drive.

There's this prominent quote in the Velvet Drive Marine Transmission Owner's Manual.

But that's not useful diagnostic information, it appears.

The old cable had some play in it. Much more than the 1/32" that's expected. The boatyard mechanic looked up the replacement part number. It was a very standard 10' Teleflex 33-Series push-pull cable. The boatyard had a shelf full of similar cables.

But.

No 10' cable. They had 6', 8', 20'. No 10'.

It's Monday. If they order it today, the replacement will arrive on Wednesday. Even if we install it right away, we're not leaving until Thursday.

Mistakes were made.

We basically said, "Okay." And wandered back to the boat.

That's the kind of thing that makes this place like an HP Lovecraft story.

We should have called West Marine and ordered the darn thing and paid the fee for next day delivery. Also, never split up in a scary marina. And always carry more than one flashlight. And look behind the doors. And carry your rigging knife at all times. I'm just sayin'.

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