Bad Boat Experiences

People are only human, or so they say. Somehow all of us, at one time or another, have gotten ourselves into a very stressful situation. Sometimes it was through no fault of our own and other times it was because we did something stupid. I have been in several stressful situations in my life and at least one was due to stupidity on my part. My only defense for this action was the fact that I was young and inexperienced. While this is no excuse, it does give you some insight into how I could have did what looked like a good idea to me in the beginning and also to a friend that was along, but turned into a horror show.

Let me explain exactly what I did and why I am very lucky to be here to talk about it. I decided to go fishing one day and a life long friend came along. We had often gone on what are known as party boats and at the time it would cost about 40 dollars to get on. Now a party boat doesn't mean that there are parties, it is a term for a boat that takes a lot of people fishing. I was about 18 years old at the time and had just started driving. My friend and I got to the dock and noticed that there was a place that was renting row boats with small motors on them for about 35 dollars for the day. I looked at my friend and he knew what I was thinking right away. If we did this, we could pocket 55 dollars between us. In those days it was a lot of money to us. So far this is not so unusual a story, is it?

Graphic Source: Fundraw

Here is the bone chilling part. We both decided that the party boats were slow and we could follow them out and come back with them and we would be perfectly safe. Dumb idea for two guys in a rowboat with a 3.5 horsepower motor and no gas gauge As the boats left, we trailed along and had no problem keeping up with the slow boats. They went out into the ocean and we could no longer see land. They stopped and we enjoyed fishing and the weather was calm and sunny. So far so good. Now it was time to go back. We had no idea which way back was, but we figured that we would just follow the boats. We hadn't counted on the fact that the tide was now against us and the boats seemed to be going back faster. We open up the motor full throttle, but the boats kept getting further and further ahead until we couldn't see them anymore.

Photo Source: Stock.xching

Not only could we not see the boats, we couldn't see any land either. Then it dawned on us, we didn't even know how much gas we had. All we could do was keep going in the same direction, which we did for about an hour, praying all the way that we wouldn't run out of gas, that the motor wouldn't stop, that a storm wouldn't hit and that we would see land. God must have blessed the fools that day, because eventually we began to see the coastline and we even made it back to exactly where we rented the boat. We were late and the boat rental guy wondered why. We told him the story and he just shook his head and never said a word.

Graphic Source: Fundraw

When I look back on things it seems that I have had some bad times in boats. Once my friend and I went fishing on a party boat on a beautiful summer day. As we got into the channel a very heavy fog rolled in. You have heard the saying that you can't see your hand in front of your face, well I am here to tell you its true. The fog was so thick that the captain had to stop and anchor the boat in the channel. At the time I thought oh well that's okay we can sit here until the fog lifts. What I didn't know at the time was this little party boat was in the same channel that the big freighters travel through. The captain kept blowing the horn and when I heard the loud propellers heading our way I realized what was going on. I thought for sure we would get hit, but each time we heard the terrible sound of huge screws heading for us, they just missed us. One time the fog had lifted slightly and I could see the side of a ship that looked like a sky scrapper going by us only a couple of feet away. I was never so happy as when that fog lifted.

I used to row a lot for exercise. I would go out into the bay and row for a couple of hours as fast as I could, so I got to know the bay pretty good. I knew the deepest parts and the shallowest parts. In the bay were islands made of reeds. I remember one time jumping out of the boat onto one of these islands and not realizing that they were not solid. I slipped through the reeds but stopped at my chest. I remember climbing back into the boat and looking like a wet dishrag. At least no one saw me do this.

Photo Source: Stock.xching

When I was dating before I was married, I am not like Tiger Woods, I took a girl out rowing. It was nice to have the company and she deemed to enjoy it. That is until IT happened. IT being the breaking of an oar. There I was in the middle of the bay with a broken oar and to make matters worse the tide was pushing me to a sandbar. I tried to prevent this but with only one oar, it was useless so we washed up on this sandbar and then the tide went out. Now let me tell you this, it is hard to believe how far onto the sandbar we got pushed, because when the tide went out we were about 100 feet inland. The sandbar was pretty wide, I would guess about 300 feet. The two of us tried to drag the heavy boat to the water, but the thing was really made well and felt like it weighed a ton.

Little by little we were getting closer. Both of us were covered with sweat, but we did get one break. When the oar snapped, it broke lengthwise so that I was able to tie it together temporarily with heavy fishing line. It took hours, but we got the boat back into the water and the temporary repair on the oar worked and I managed to get the boat back to the boat rental.

My last boat story is a short one. I had a friend that had extremely thick glasses. They looked like the proverbial coke bottles. He also liked to fish and I went out with him many times into the bay. We would go to the boat rental and get a row boat and fish near the coast. One day I realized that we were over the deepest part of the bay and I remarked to him, this is the deepest part right down here. He bent over the boat to look and his glasses fell doing this odd flip right into the drink, never to be seen again. Abbott and Costello could not have done this better.

I guess one could say in hindsight that boats and I don't really mix well, but on the other hand you might say that a good boat saved my life.