Rollin On the River...Chapter II

I was off of work Friday and went boating on the river again with my mom and dad. I thought I would give my dad a break from driving the boat since he drives us around all the time, so as soon as we were on the water, I took the helm. We were on the water for about 10 minutes, still idling our way up the slough to the main channel of the river. My dad was in the process of digging the river map out of the glove box and telling me you've really got to be careful, because there hidden wing dams under the water in a lot of places when CLUNK CLUNK CLUNK! We hit something. He said "Put it in neutral, put it in neutral!" So I throw her in neutral and trim the motor up. I was like "Oh, you mean I should be careful not to hit one of THOSE???" Sheesh. I wish they would mark those things a little better so you would know where they were. We took a minute to survey the damage and it didn't look as bad as I thought - I didn't chew up the prop at all, but did ding the bottom part of the motor a little bit. Even though it didn't look bad, I guess I messed up some rubber ring inside the prop, b/c the boat wouldn't go full speed after that. Luckily we had a spare prop in the boat so after we had lunch at Kinder's restaurant on the water, we found a nice sandy beach and pulled the boat up to change the prop. Good as new, right? Spent the rest of the day cruisin around with no problems (my dad driving of course). Wouldn't ya know it, as soon as I get behind the wheel again and I'm driving for about 5 minutes, I hear a loud steady "Beeeeeeeeeeep!" Some warning alarm is going off in the boat. I promptly put it in neutral and turn the engine off and I'm like "Now what?? What the heck was THAT?" My dad said it's either low on oil, or something else, or something else. (Technichal stuff...girls aren't good at remembering that kind of thing) He checked everything out and said it looked okay, so he started the boat up and after a couple minutes the alarm went off. By this point we decided it would be best to head back towards the marina where we put the boat in. The alarm came one one more time during the 30 minute trip back, but we made it back safely. I am so done with driving the boat - why does everything always have to happen when I'M driving? Seriously. It's like the curse of the Gretch. I have a feeling that next time I volunteer to drive, he's gonna say "Umm, no that's okay. I got it!" lol