In our last installment, Options suffered a tremendous blow to her port-side rudder, temporarily losing steering. That was last Monday. When we got to Lambs Marina, we shared our problem and Mr. Lamb arranged for a diver and all-around fix-it guy to come first thing Tuesday morning.

Michael Mayo II dove on the rudder and confirmed we had a bent rudder. Mike cheated by using a light to shine through the tobacco-colored water to make his determination. He found that our biggest problem was that the bottom of the rudder had been shoved backwards and was scraping hard on the back bottom of the boat when the rudder was turned through the middle. Miraculously, Mike also had a way to fix the boat without pulling it out of the water to drop the rudder out. This is where the truck comes in!

Mike described a thick, strong padded belt that he would wrap around the lower part of the rudder and connect to a long chain. The chain would be led across the harbor in front of Options and attached to a piling. Ropes would then be led from Options' port-side cleats across the harbor in back of Options and attached to the marina's fuel truck, which apparently had rings mounted on its front bumper just for this purpose!

Options was docked on its starboard side to the marina's fuel dock. To keep Options from moving laterally, Tim and I tied eight or so dock lines from Options' cleats to as many fuel dock pilings. We unwrapped a 250 foot spare anchor line and tied it between the truck's bumper and two port-side cleats. We tugged and tugged until those lines were as tight as we could make them (Tim and I had sore backs that night to remind us how hard we had tugged!). Mike had already dropped chain onto the bottom of the harbor from just beneath the rudder all the way to the dock about 50 feet in front of Options. Mike and his Dad, Michael Mayo I, rigged up a "come along" between the piling and the chain.

Let me pause here. Apparently, every guy in the world knows what a "come along" is. I had never heard of it. Tim explained to me that it was invented during the Civil War to help move field artillery around. With the repeated movement of a short cranking arm, it allows you to tighten a chain by a very small fraction. It took hundreds of cranks to tighten the chain! Here's a link if you want to see the exact 3-ton model they used: http://www.buy.com/prod/3-ton-lever-block-chain-hoist-come-along/227962439.html?listingId=231196327

It took Mike a while to rig the belt to the rudder with a rope to hold it in place. Then, Mike's father, Michael Mayo I, and Mr. Lamb alternated between two come alongs to make the chain tighter and tighter. Mike was under the boat, checking the gap between the boat and the rudder as all the ropes to the truck got very tight. My job was to hold onto a line that Mike would tug on when the gap was right and then I would call out to the "come-along team" to stop. We stopped several times before Mike was satisfied that we had it just tight enough to bend the rudder back without breaking the boat. I was nervous!

Once the padded belt and chain were removed, I gave the wheel a try. You could still feel the rudder rubbing as it turned through the middle, but you could push the wheel through that rough patch with much less force. We were back in business!