Compass Rose

I (Colin) was looking forward to, what was going to be, our longest cruise on Lough Neagh. In the end Ronnie (My Father) was otherwise engaged and I took a friends son (Samuel) along instead.

 We headed out from Antrim for Kinnego at about 9:00 am to take part in the "Cruise the Lough" event. The weather was pretty bad (wet & windy). We were running against the wind so the ride was jarring and uncomfortable. We had to run at about one quarter throttle so it took about 1 hout and 50 minutes to get to Kinnego. I found that the GPS in my new Nokia N95 was excellent and showed us exactly where we where at all times (it was quite heavy on the battery though).

 We arrived at Kinnego and fount that no one knew much about what was supposed to be happening. The advertised workshops were nowhere to be seen. This was quite dissappointing for me as the workshops would have been interesting. The "Powerboat fleet" headed out about 12:30. There wasn't any formality or organisation. A lot of boats just started leaving the marina heading towards Coney island. We just tagged along behind. As we approached Coney island the boats started heading off in different directions. We followed one group until they headed into Coney island and tied up. We decided to head back to Kinnego.

 On the way back we ran into shallow water and damaged the prop. After that we decided to run for home and call it a day. The journey back up the lough was fun. We were running with the waves and Compass Rose handled fantastically (even though there was a bit of vibration from the damaged prop). We made the trip home in 45 minutes. We had to wait until Ronnie could come down with his 4X4 (Isuzu Trooper) to land Compass Rose. The wait was going to be a few hours so Samuel went ashore on the public side of the river and went into Antrim town.

 I tied Compass Rose up on the boat club side of the river, switched on the radio and relaxed in the sun. By the time Ronnie arrived A boat hadmaneuvered into the slipway for the owner to work on it. Unable to land Compass Rose we tied up overnight in a vacant berth. The following morning we landed Compass Rose and had a thorough inspection of the damage.

 The skeag had been bent over and there were chunks torn out of the aluminium prop. We maneuvered Compass Rose into her berth in the trailer park and went home.

 On the Monday morning Ronnie phoned round a number of chandlerys and eventually sourced a new prop in Islandmagee. We drove down to Islandmagee and bought the new prop. We also ordered a spare prop and a floating prop wrench. On arriving back to Antrim Boat Club we had the damaged prop replaced with about 10 minutes work.

 The guy and the chandlers in Islandmagee said that he could supply a new skeg and weld it into place for us over the winter. This would be much cheaper than buying a new lower gearbox housing.