Scoop
Lieutenant Junior Grade
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2002
- Messages
- 1,158
Talk about embarrasing.
We went on a family trip. 5 families and three house boats. Rainy Lake Minnesota side. One morning I got up earlier than everyone and I decided to go out in the boat and see if I could find the good walleye place the employee of the houseboat company told me about.
I got my navigation map out, started up the 40HP motor and went off in the 18' Lund Alaskan. I was going slow because the lake has a lot of rocks and I was unfamiliar. I read the map and thought my course was pretty straight forward.
All of a sudden, I hear a scraping and then I stop dead. Oh crap. I hit a rock. The 18' boat had a hand tiller 40HP so you really can not see in front of the boat at all. I look down and see I am on a rock island. I look at my map and see that the three islands I saw on the map were not exactly the three islands I was seeing. There was one behind the other.
All right no problem. I stopped dead but did not hit the motor. Put the motor in reverse, no good. Rock the boat and reverse, no good. I guess I have to lighten the load. I took my shoes and socks off and got out of the boat onto the rock. I pushed , I rocked, I lifted (Best workout I had in months), no good. I realized the rocks were sharp so I decided to put my shoes back on and get them wet.
I stepped onto the rock and tried again. One false step and I plunged into 14 feet of water off the side of the rock. Thought I better take the sunglasses off before I lost them. I pushed and lifted and rocked again and again and again. No good.
I looked over at the houseboats which were about a mile off to see if I could signal someone. No one was up yet. I decided, the only things I could do were swim for it or stand there for a long time.
Just as I was preparing to swim, I see a boat cross the mouth of the bay. Here I am in the middle of the water standing next to my boat like I am walking on water. The boat turns in. When they start getting closer, I realize that it is the fishing guide that we hired a couple days before through the boat rental place.:$
I untie the anchor rope and throw it to him. I tie it to the boat and he tries to use his boat to back it off. He has a cabin cruiser. A fairly powerfull boat. He hits the gas and tries to back me off, no good. He turns the boat around and after working back and forth, the boat comes free. He jumps in the boat and comes back to get me. I thank him and aplogize to the other guys he is guiding that day. He tells me, yep, this one is tricky. Usually the water is not this high and you can see water breaking on it. He goes on his way.
I go back to the house boat, tie up, and walk in soaking wet fully dressed just as everyone else is waking up. All I hear is "What happend to you?" I say " Nothing, I will tell you later."
When the boat was pulled later, there was a small scratch on the bottom.
We went on a family trip. 5 families and three house boats. Rainy Lake Minnesota side. One morning I got up earlier than everyone and I decided to go out in the boat and see if I could find the good walleye place the employee of the houseboat company told me about.
I got my navigation map out, started up the 40HP motor and went off in the 18' Lund Alaskan. I was going slow because the lake has a lot of rocks and I was unfamiliar. I read the map and thought my course was pretty straight forward.
All of a sudden, I hear a scraping and then I stop dead. Oh crap. I hit a rock. The 18' boat had a hand tiller 40HP so you really can not see in front of the boat at all. I look down and see I am on a rock island. I look at my map and see that the three islands I saw on the map were not exactly the three islands I was seeing. There was one behind the other.
All right no problem. I stopped dead but did not hit the motor. Put the motor in reverse, no good. Rock the boat and reverse, no good. I guess I have to lighten the load. I took my shoes and socks off and got out of the boat onto the rock. I pushed , I rocked, I lifted (Best workout I had in months), no good. I realized the rocks were sharp so I decided to put my shoes back on and get them wet.
I stepped onto the rock and tried again. One false step and I plunged into 14 feet of water off the side of the rock. Thought I better take the sunglasses off before I lost them. I pushed and lifted and rocked again and again and again. No good.
I looked over at the houseboats which were about a mile off to see if I could signal someone. No one was up yet. I decided, the only things I could do were swim for it or stand there for a long time.
Just as I was preparing to swim, I see a boat cross the mouth of the bay. Here I am in the middle of the water standing next to my boat like I am walking on water. The boat turns in. When they start getting closer, I realize that it is the fishing guide that we hired a couple days before through the boat rental place.:$
I untie the anchor rope and throw it to him. I tie it to the boat and he tries to use his boat to back it off. He has a cabin cruiser. A fairly powerfull boat. He hits the gas and tries to back me off, no good. He turns the boat around and after working back and forth, the boat comes free. He jumps in the boat and comes back to get me. I thank him and aplogize to the other guys he is guiding that day. He tells me, yep, this one is tricky. Usually the water is not this high and you can see water breaking on it. He goes on his way.
I go back to the house boat, tie up, and walk in soaking wet fully dressed just as everyone else is waking up. All I hear is "What happend to you?" I say " Nothing, I will tell you later."
When the boat was pulled later, there was a small scratch on the bottom.
