Clayton Municipal Dock
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck
We spent two nights in Clayton, it’s a great little town on the river. It has a lot of cute shops and restaurants. Our plan was to stay and relax a day or so before heading back across Lake Ontario. Plans never seem to work out as we hope, but in this case we were lucky our mishap occurred at a perfect spot.
Just as we were pulling into the municipal dock in Clayton we lost forward and reverse gears...Stan had no steering. We were able to toss a line to the dock master and he helped us get tied up. Clayton has quite a few boat yards so we were able to have a mechanic take a look at it that afternoon, but that particular marina never called back. So Tuesday morning Stan talked to another mechanic, at French Creek Marina, who came by and took a look. He told Stan it could be the transmission or maybe the flex plate. The only way to know was to disconnect the transmission. To save time and money Stan got busy taking it apart. At this point the plan was to have Stan disassemble the unit and the shop would send people over to pick it up.
A couple of hours into this process the mechanic came back and told us because of scheduling issues it would be at least a week before they could come to the boat to work on the transmission, but if we got it out they could pick it up and run tests on it. After trying to lift the transmission out of the engine room for awhile Stan checked the flex plate (damper plate) and realized that was our issue. Stan removed the bell housing and then the flex plate and took it over to the parts department at the marina and within 30 minutes he was back, ready to install the flex plate and connect up the bell housing and transmission.
From start to finish the job took eight long hours, but in labor alone Stan saved over $700. Definitely not the way he wanted to spend the day, but the job was done and we were back in business. I should have taken pictures, even thought about it a few times, but we were so busy and so dirty, it just didn’t seem right at the time.
We did get to enjoy two amazing meals while we were in Clayton and we even checked out the Wood Boat Brewery...so it wasn't all work.
There were quite a few murals on the downtown buildings depicting Clayton's history.
Now I understand why you were behind on your blog post. So glad it turned out the way it did. Hope you guys have a fun day traveling as you go back to your 'home port'.
ReplyDeleteBarbara and David
PDQ "Miss My Money"
Plus finding wifi is next to impossible here in the 1000 Islands. We have T-Mobile for a hot spot and our phones. Verizon was a lot better for traveling but we let that go last year. So to post I needed free wifi or T-Mobile...both were hard to come by.
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