My neighbor recently pulled a nice, new boat down the alley and into his garage. He is still young with three little ones and he and his family enjoy the water. As I walked over to admire his new family boat, I remembered my own excursion with the high seas back when I was about his age.
I was twenty-seven, single, I had no bills, and was looking for a means to burn up my discretionary income. I had recently come from Chicago to the Peoria, Illinois area. I had been out on the Illinois River a few times with friends who had boats and I thought the excursions were fun. Around Peoria, the Illinois River widens to about a mile across in two areas in what is unoriginally called the Upper and Lower Peoria Lake. There is a lot of boating in Peoria and I caught the bug. Couple that with the fact I had some cash and thus I briefly entered the world of nautical ineptitude.
A friend I worked with was getting married and he was selling his boat to help get money to buy a house. The boat was a real beauty. It was a twenty-foot Glastron with a 150 horse power Black Max outboard engine. The price was right and so this landlubber from Chicago became a skipper of a boat I never had the time to name. But that's another story.
I will never forget that first day in early April. It had been a wet spring and the air still brought a plume of smoke when a person talked. The Upper Peoria Lake was in what they called "early flood stage" but I had a boat and a Wednesday off and I wasn't going to wait for satisfactory weather conditions to launch my new toy into the water.
I grabbed a friend who also had zero knowledge of boating and together we went down to the boat ramp area to find out how good my new toy actually was.
The fact the combination boat supply/ bait shop/pay fees for boat launch store was closed didn't slow me down at all. It seems that no one in their right mind, except the huge barges that pushed their loads up and down the river, were actually in the water right then. The key words there, of course, were "in their right mind".
Backing the boat up to the half underwater boat launch ramp was a little nerve wracking. From time to time I read of some idiot going into the water with their truck or car while trying to launch their boat and I had a knack at doing things wrong even back then.
I was thrilled when the maneuver to get the Glastron in the water went without a hitch. My friend, who was freezing from being up to his knees in the water helping me, said we should grab our winter coats out of the truck before we took off on the high seas. That was a great idea because the Illinois was high seas that day. The flood stage waters, a heavy northerly wind and temperatures of about 40 degrees made my first trek into the waters as sensible as the Titanic going full speed ahead towards an iceberg.
At first the boat labored as we pushed off into the three and four foot swells that hammered the boat. But I was determined to keep going and once out in the channel I hit the throttle. I recall smiling incessantly as the powerful engine lifted the boat above the swells. We sped around at about thirty knots, slashing in and out of waves created by the great barges. I recall always waving to the crews and wondering what nautical expression they meant when using a pointer finger they circled the side of their heads.
After about an hour and after icicles on our noses reached three inches in length, I noticed the boat was becoming very sluggish. It also seemed to be getting lower and lower into the water. My friend noticed this too and just by deductive reasoning pulled up the floor hatch where all the gear was kept. We both noticed at the same minute that since everything from skis to lifejackets was floating that we were sinking and sinking fast.
Giving it all I could I steered back towards the ramp. When we got within twenty feet of the dock, I told my friend to continue steering and I jumped into the frigid waters and swam to shore to get the trailer lined up for a possible salvage operation.
I backed into the water far more then safety said but I knew the boat needed to get out of the water fast. Otherwise the boat launch would be officially closed since there would be a boat under water right at the end of it.
It was extremely hard winching the boat. The winch was made to pull a boat out of the water and not a boat with half the Illinois River in its belly.
Finally I was half on the trailer and decided to pull the trailer with the boat half on the trailer out of the water. I thought maybe we could find out why it was leaking, drain the water and then reset the boat on the trailer properly. When the keel came out of the river, water gushed from a hole in the back of the boat.
My friend yelled over that we had lost our plug and that is why the boat took on water. I asked "what plug" and he knew immediately why he shouldn't do any further boating with me. As he explained for the next half hour how the boat has a plug that should be in while in the water and only out when on dry land, the Glastron continued to spew a steady current back into the river.
When the water went to a trickle, my friend put in the plug that he found in the glove box, back into the boat's hole. We reset the boat on the trailer, went home, changed clothes, and drove to the nearest tavern, which happened to be called "The Sea Merchant". I thought how close I came to drinking that afternoon at another establishment called, "Davey Jones' Locker".
Well that's the story I recalled as I walked around my neighbor's new sea worthy toy. I went around to the stern to make sure he had a plug. He did and it was in. He looked at me sort of funny as I checked to make sure it was tight and secure in the hole. He doesn't know the story.
Freelance writer, columnist, author and writing coach, ex-Chicagoan Mike Fak presently resides in Central Illinois. More information about Mike's services are available at his home website www.mikefak.com
Mike currently writes primarily humor columns for searchwarp bi-weekly and is the managing editor of www.lincolndailynews.com
» left by sue thom from nj (174 days 3 hours ago.)
hi mike, t he predicaments you have gotten yourself in! i'm glad all worked out okay.
best regards,
sue
» left by Laura (174 days 2 hours ago.)
Mike, don't you know that when you are telling a story like this about yourself, you are supposed to change it around and make yourself the smart one who realized that "Your friend" forgot to put the plug in his boat. Very funny article as always.
» left by Mike Fak(4,266) Mike Fak (173 days 21 hours ago.)
Thanks Laura. I suppose I should say the story the other way but I feel if someone screws up they are fair game including me...and I seem to have a near monopoly on strange occurrences. Mike
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