The Mariner is at the Red Dragon Canoe Club, still on its trailer but no worse for the 150 mile trip from Westport, CT.
John Morrison joined me for the excursion before the rain had stopped. But as we neared Westport, the wind began to increase and trees along the Merritt Parkway were thrashing.
Eric, the seller, had already replaced the wheel bearings in one wheel when we arrived, and he had rigged trailer lights mounted on a beam attached to the boat's transom. He showed me the bearings in the other wheel, and to my untrained eye they looked fine.
There just were a couple of wires that had to be connected in the lights. And the other end of the wires had to be secured in a plug that would connect them to the car. These tasks, which we thought would take only a few minutes, seemed to be completed when we tested the lights and all worked.
But then something happened. We don't know how, but there was a short in the circuitry and a fuse was blown. By the time we got some of the lights working, more than two hours had passed.
Eric offered us sandwiches, since it was now well past lunch time. But we declined, concerned that we make it home before dark.
We started out, quite slowly. We stopped at the end of Eric's lane to check everything. Then we checked at the next stop sign.
Trailers are not allowed on the Merritt Parkway, so we made our way to old Route 1 to the south and from there to Interstate 95, where we stayed in the slow lane, occasionally falling to 40 miles an hour behind traffic.
We suspected that there would be a trailer ban on the New Jersey Turnpike, so when we crossed the Hudson River on the Tappan Zee Bridge, we kept going west until we reached Interstate 287 south, the outer peripheral highway around New York City. This added perhaps 20 miles to our trip, but it was still the fastest way if we couldn't use the Turnpike, which indeed proved to be closed to trailers due to high winds.
The sun had just set when we arrived at the Red Dragon, and once more the fuse had recently failed, so we had no trailer lights.
But all seems to be well on the as-yet-unnamed little Mariner.
Indeed, Ancient Mariner sounds like a good choice, but we're still open to suggestions.