Re: My First!
Woodrat, you forgot to mention how that had been one of those mornings that we had to use the truck battery because the boat battery was dead. So, before retrieveing the truck, you had to wade to get the battery back out of the boat and then put it in the truck. I remember we lost the 'custom' fish club as it floated off. Domage.<br /><br />But that wasn't the time I was talking about. I meant the time we went out to Hat Island from Everett in a decaying storm. As we headed out we noticed that 4' white caps were a little unusual even for January (and the guy in the crabber noticed that we were pretty unusual - even if it had been June) and had to head south to take the waves so that only a few gallons at a time were shipped. When we headed north as we approached the lee of the island - not entirely in the lee actually - we were were running from big swells. Running from big swells is a lot more comfortable in a planing boat than crashing into big whitecaps... until the engine decides to kick out of gear. Well, I guess that's what you get with a '69 Johnson Electoshift when the throttle/shifter has been submerged in saltwater (say, about a week before, see above.) I remember looking back and seeing a wave that was about 5 times the height of the transom rapidly begin to approach right after the engine kicked into neutral. Anyway, my frantic gestures and the alarming look on my face apparently caused my bro to look back and then apply some of the type of treatening language that always motivates mechanical apparatus in a pinch, causing the engine to shift back into gear and escape the wave by probably a good 6".<br /><br />Just to prove were not lunatics (by choice) we thought it prudent to stop by a marina (probably active in summer - empty and positively rancid in winter) to check the weather bulletin. The weather report on VHF said that a bit of a storm was blowing in and that there was a small craft advisory in effect. If a 13' Boston Whaler isn't a 'small craft' I don't know what is. We decided that rather than spending the rest of the week on a mostly abandoned island with sporadic winter ferry service, we should hightail it back to the launch in Everett and call it a day before things got ugly. In retrospect, we should have stayed and fished as it turns out that the small craft advisory was more than 12 hours old and we had suffered the worst on the way over. By the time we made the ramp in Everett the water was practically placid (comparatively, anyway.) Defeated and with an engine that was playing nasty tricks on us, we went home.
