The Rudder Incident

As cut across the San Juan Channel, towards Friday Harbor, Captain Carey decided to go below and rustle us up some grub. There wasn't a stitch of wind. So we were toodling along, when the Captain said 'Why don't you kick it up a notch?' so I powered up the motor, and then CLUNK, CLACK, CLACK, CLUNK!!!. I dropped the motor in neutral, the Captain jumped up on deck, and was hollering 'what did we hit?' I quickly looked out over the motor, and sure enough the breakaway pin did just that, broke away. The rudder was flipped back and was hitting the prop. The side that had the bolt on it, appeared to still be intact, and that's the side we kept looking at.The other side had broke off, so the bolt was stuck inside. So the Captain used the boat hook and shoved the rudder back into place, and we decided we could still make it if we toodled along, and stayed in low rpm's.  And it worked great like that, but we decided not to go into Friday Harbor, because it is the busiest marina. They have ferries, boats, and float planes landing and taking off all the time, along with Whale Watcher boats too. So off to Stuart Island. As we passed the Wasp Islands. As we neared Spieden Island we started to see some porpoises, they were playing in the rips. Some of the rips were quite cool actually, but if you were to fall in, we would never see you again,even with a pfd, they were gnarly. We chugged along past Jones Island, and between Spieden & Flat Top, to Stuart Island, and decided it would be best if we went into Provost Bay. There was just enough room at the dock for us to squeeze in. Red Dog and Roxi were happy to see land again. We had a great time wandering around the island. A family that lives on the island has a "honor system' store/treasure chest. We bought (send a check later, no cash) a t-shirt, that has a pirate on it, a real nice fleece vest, and a couple of hand painted post cards. bunkmate