August 29 – Kilmarnock Lock
44°53′3″ N 75°55′49″ W

I’ve got the “Bow Thruster Blues”

For the past several days I’ve noticed that my bow thruster has not been as effective as it has been in the past. This is an important part of the boat as it makes it a heck of a lot easier to maneuver when docking or positioning the boat when entering & exiting a lock.

I took the photo below last fall when I had Santosha hauled out for the winter in Goderich. The arrow shows the location of the bow thruster. The electric motor for it is under the bed in the forward cabin.

I had thought that the thruster was simply choked up with stringy weeds because parts of the Rideau River have a very heavy growth of them. The thruster is only about a foot below the waterline so when I was docked at The Narrows Lock on Tuesday I “dove down” on it to check it out and found that it was clean. So weeds are not the cause of the problem.

On Wednesday afternoon when I was entering the lock at Kilmarnock it would not work at all. Oh, oh. This is not good!

There are 3 possible causes of this problem (in order of easiest & least expensive to fix to most complicated & most expensive):

a) the battery for the thruster is dead & will no longer hold a charge – new battery required

b) the control switch for the thruster is faulty & needs to be replaced

c) the electric motor for the thruster has packed it in

If the cause of the problem is the battery or the control switch then the problem can be fixed relatively easily but if the electric motor has packed it in then that could be very expensive to fix or replace.

Last week I made tentative arrangements for Santosha to be hauled out for the winter & stored at a boatyard near Merrickville. But I was not planning on doing that until around September 10 because I wanted to go back to Ottawa for a few more days of boating with Wayne & Scott & their families – plus my friend Bo was planning to come to Ottawa to spend a few days with me. Now all of those plans have to go on hold.

I am currently less than 2 hours away from Merrickville so I will go to the boatyard on Thursday & have a mechanic check out the thruster for me. If the problem cannot be easily fixed then I will have Santosha hauled out right away & placed into winter storage. This is not the way I wanted my boating season to end.

Stay tuned….