At some point in June, I made my first, and it turns out, last voyage in the SS JTD, aka the rowboat. Sean had gifted me a new pair of matching oars for Christmas, so I was excited to try them out. We haul the boat out of the shed and down to the point, and work on getting the oars into the oarlocks. So far, so good! I grab the cotter pins to lock the oarlocks onto the boat and we're good to go. Except, of course, just using 1 cotter pin turns out to be not enough, and the oarlocks slide right out. After a lot of struggling and swearing, I manage to lock a second pin onto each one cross-wise. Good to go, right? I wasn't on the water for more than a couple of minutes, enjoying the freedom of my matching oars, before I realized that the perpendicular cotter pin was literally grinding a hole through the ancient wood at the right side of the boat. And I couldn't move it. Oh, and it was still leaking slowly, despite all the flexseal I'd previously applied!
As one can imagine, this already put me in a bad mood, and it was not improved by the difficulty of actually maneuvering the boat to do what I wanted to do: attack the invasive reeds growing out from the little island in on the far side of the pond. In a perfect world, I would love to go onto the little island, but I'm not sure I'm going to get there. If you go around the back side of the pond, onto Ken's property, the island is like 10 feet from the shore (we measured). Definitely too far to jump or put a board, and from my minimal explorations with Joe I think the depth drops pretty fast there, so it's not a wading over situation. When we first moved in, the "channel" to one side of the island did not have reeds in it, but now they've fully grown in to block it off. Doesn't seem to be bother the fish or the frogs any, but it bugs me! Anyway, unless I get ahold of a temporary bridge, attacking from the water is the only way I can try to manage them. It's hard to get the boat in close enough to cut the reeds while working 2 oars, and without an anchor, everything you do makes the boat move - generally, away from where you want it to go. I did manage to cut a portion of the front side of the island, but then I called it a day and we hauled her ashore. The other thing that sucks about using the rowboat for this purpose (especially with the leaking!) is that in bringing the cut reeds back to shore for disposal, the boat gets absolutely grimy and needs to be washed out. But of course we're way too far from the house to use the hose. I brought down some water in a bucket, and as I was contemplating this creaky wooden boat, with its leaking and now with its brand-new hole in the side...I decided I was done. Finito! There had to be a better solution, and this boat was not the one.
Amazingly, through the power of the Branford "Buy Nothing" group, I had that boat gone in less than 2 hours from when I made this decision. A woman from Stony Creek showed up with a Tahoe and we loaded that sucker in the back. She said her kids would be happy to work on it. I kept the nice new oars, haha. By chance, we just reconnected today when I had something else to give away, and she sent me a lovely photograph of her three adult kids happily rowing about - and it turns out they've got a real pond, not our comparatively tiny puddle! So that made me double happy: first that I managed to get rid of it at no effort or cost to myself (because if no one wanted it, I was contemplating hiring someone to take it to the dump), and then that it was being genuinely used and appreciated. It seems to have belonged to the house's original owners and pond-creators, Don and Betty, so I'm glad it's getting some new life.
Also, we have so much room in the shed now!
And what about the reed project? After some perusal, I bought an inflatable boat, which I have not yet tried, because it promptly got too hot for me to care. Updates to that coming at some point...!
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