Ahem...well...we did actually leave the dock this morning. We set alarms for 6am and got up, topped off the water tanks, rigged our leeclothes (for sleeping while underway) and prepped the boat for the passage to Maine. A final weather check over our cereal, and then on with the PFD's, the engine started right up, we cast off the docklines, and shifted into reverse to back off the dock.

No motion.

The shift lever didn't get the transmission into reverse. after several more attempts, sifting into foirward and then reverse, the shift lever suddenly wasn't connected to the transmission at all! By this time we had traveled a whole four feet from the dock so we threw the lines back to some folks who were seeing us off and they pulled us the 4 feet back to the dock. That was our total travel by boat for the day: 8 feet!

Some investigation found that the shift cable had broken irreparably. Now, we care a lot of spare parts when we cruise, including some fairly unusual ones. But the shift cable is not part of our inventory (the one that broke was 20 years old: They just don't fail very often). So, after some phone calls, we rented a car, drove to Halifax to buy the last one in stock, drove back, and reassembled the whole thing, learning new lessens about the quirks of Edson steering pedestals in the process.

Fortunately, weather window still looks good for the next two days so we will try again tomorrow...