| The Storm by Jim Hurt | |
|
The big rollers from the boat on our left and the one
on our right came together and collided over the top of our bow just as we
were going down into the trough of a wave that had come from behind us.
I hope it is the only time in my life I ever see the bow of my boat go
completely under water about a foot and stay there for several seconds.
From where I sat in the center of the boat, it looked to me like the
bow was going to be trapped under the water.
I had visions of the boat going slowly to the bottom, never to come
back up again. With all of the
boats coming behind us, I figured our odds of not getting run over were not
real good. It was a true
"Oh, sh**!" moment! Pardon
my language, but no one says, "Oh, shoot!" at time like that.
Actually I don't remember what, if anything, either of us said.
I think we were too scared and shocked to say much of anything.
Evidently someone was watching after us that day
because the bow of the boat came up out of that mess.
Fred gunned it just a tad and we kept going even though we had taken on
quite a bit of water. Had we had
a camcorder, we could have made a TV commercial for the sea worthiness of a
Sea Nymph.
Fred
turned his bilge pump on, and we kept a close eye on other rollers, and made
sure the same thing did not happen again.
But there was a lot of bad criss-crossing chop in between those piers,
and a couple more times, it looked like the same thing would happen to us, but
somehow, Fred avoided them. I
turned, looked him in the eye, and said, “Fred, I’m glad you were driving
this blasted boat today!” He
held eye contact for a second and just nodded.
He knew I meant more than that. Neither
of us could say what we were really thinking.
When
a lot of boats are in a narrow confinement like that, their wakes bounce off
the piers and come back. The
waves bouncing back from the piers hit the ones heading toward the piers.
As you can imagine, this creates a real choppy situation, something
like a washing machine. It is not
easy driving a boat in a washing machine.
It was white-knuckle time all the way through the piers until we got back to where the river widened out. I bet only fifteen to twenty minutes passed since we first realized we had to reel in and get off the lake, but it seemed like an eternity. We may not have been in danger of loosing our lives, but it was a scarier experience than I care to have on a daily basis. If we had capsized or turned over, I am pretty sure the first boat coming up behind us would have stopped and pulled us out of the water, and we were wearing our life jackets. But then again you never know.
Fred
and I have relived that experience many times, wondering if we had somehow
been stupid or foolish, or done anything wrong.
Having had the experience, I can tell you that if I were ever again in
a similar situation, we would go inside the piers sooner, and wouldn’t wait
for the big boats. Waiting till
more or less the last minute with a smaller boat was probably a mistake, but
that storm came up so fast! We
had never seen a bunch of larger boats trying to get inside the piers, all at
the same time. Obviously, it was not a good time for a small boat to be
there.
One
might say you should never go on Lake Michigan in a seventeen-foot boat, but I
have seen many that size or smaller many times.
In the summer, during perch season, you can count literally hundreds of
smaller boats on the lake. The
storm didn't actually hit until after we had the boat on the trailer and we
were in the truck pulling away from the launch, but the pre-storm waves had
been something!
It
was only about 9:00 A.M. when we came off the lake.
We had breakfast, hoping the storm would blow over and we could go back
out and fish some more. After
breakfast, we drove to a bluff where we could see out on the lake, and even
though the storm had passed, the wind was still up and there were still some
pretty big waves.
Then I saw something I couldn’t believe. A boat that looked to be about a twenty three footer was just coming up to the piers. He was rocking and rolling pretty good. We watched him all the way inside the piers and figured he had cut it too close.
Instead of running in with the other boats, he had to ride the storm out with his bow pointed into the wind. Then when the storm let up a little, he made a run for it. I’ve never had to do that, and hope I never do. I bet if we were scared, he had to have been terrified. You just can't be too careful on these big bodies of water.
You know, writing this story makes me want to call Fred and say, "Hey pick me up Saturday morning at 4:30. We’re going salmon fishing!"
