Friday, September 16: There is still a trip.

    Waking up and feeling refreshed actually I was because now there was still a trip. Imagine having to face coming back after two days! 
     The big project for the day was to get the rudder back on which I knew wasn't going to be easy. I was amazed at how heavy the thing was. I undid it from the winch and having a line already going aft I let it once again sink down so I could bring it up into a good position aft. I had taken the tiller off thinking that the trip act would be easier without it. Which worked well.
     Now all I had to do was raise it enough to let it just fall back into it's fittings. I set up a block and tackle from the backstay and led it to the starboard winch. It really did take this much to raise it. Because the boat was on anchor it was swinging back and forth with the current plus the rudder had a mind of it's own as to where it wanted to go. After fighting with it for a half hour I finally figured out that if I put the tiller back on it might give me some leverage. Luckily the top pintle had to go in first. Finally I got it to at least start to go in. The problem was the bottom pintle had gotten bent and wouldn't go down the whole way. I was just going to have to live with that. The rest of the day all I could do was clean up and hangout. There was no way I was going to leave the boat and row over to see Nancy.   I called her and we agreed to meet in Westbrook the next day. Because the front had come thru there was a beautiful sunset and a really good tasting beer(or two).