22 Jan 24:
Pat was on a small motor launch in the middle of the narrow end of the river, about 40 feet out from the bottom of the boatyard slipway. He was attempting to start a small Stuart Turner 2 stroke inboard motor.
Many will know that the old Stuart Turner 2 stroke hand cranked motors were reliable, economical and long lasting, but they can be very troublesome starters at times.
After a few minutes of relentless effort and much cursing, his short fuse sparked his powder, the cast iron starting handle, which weighed about 10 lbs was angrily removed from the flywheel shaft and thrown with all his strength, the direction it was heading in wasn't even considered, the all consuming thing was just to throw the offending handle as far as humanly possible, a punishment for it's part in refusing to bring the engine to life.
The starting handle whirled through the air in a high arc, across the 40ft of water, past the whole 80 ft of the slipway, eventually coming to a stop when it struck the transom of a deep keel boat inside the boat shed at the top of the slipway. The slipway has a slope of about 20° so you can guess how high above the water the starting handle was at that point. An Olympian performance by any measure.
Many thanks to Cap' Bilge Rat for sharing Pat's story.
No comments:
Post a Comment