I don’t know why our boat ride Saturday morning reminds me of Gilligan’s island – we didn’t intend to go out for a three-hour tour, and we weren’t shipwrecked on a desert island…but still, it was tumultuous event.

I had high hopes for the boat this summer.  our new used motor was finally working right, we’ve been out a few times already…but the last couple of times it’d do a surging thing when I accelerated and then it’d slow down, and something was amiss. oh boy.  but then I noticed that gas was squirting out of the line when I pumped the ball thing that you have to pump to make the gas go into the tank.  kevin replaced that, and we thought, great, that was the problem.

yesterday morning, though, kevin and I took the boat out and it was doing it again.  but then we switched from the main tank to the spare tank and it was running great so kevin figured there must be something wrong with the main tank.

he went to the store to buy a new tank and mom and I set out in the boat.  for some reason I decided to heat us up a couple of frozen turkey sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches.

we went out at about 11:30.  it was a little bit cool and was supposed to start raining at 1:00, so I figured we could be out for maybe an hour.  we tootled along by the shore, weren’t in a hurry and got over near the motor boat club.  suddenly, there was a piercing, high-pitched screech from the motor.  oh boy.  mom and I looked at each other, and she asked if that was coming from my phone.  nope.  I shut off the motor and called kevin, who said the it must have overheated.

trouble.  he said to let it cool off for a while, so mom and I spent some minutes drifting away from the motor boat club, as the wind and waves started to pick up.  I tried the motor, and the noise was still there.  I impatiently waited another eight minutes and tried it, and the motor started again.  we got a little distance and then the noise came back.  I called kevin yet again and he said that since the wind was picking up so much I should just drive it home like that.

we crashed through some giant waves, got a little closer to home…and then the motor died and there was a bad smell.  oh boy.

kevin said the motor block might have cracked, and basically, we were screwed.  we were close to the shore and the boat got blown near somebody’s dock and we sort of banged and scraped along til we arrived at their dock.  I grabbed at a bar with my extended oar and yelled at mom to put a rope over it, and she did…but then it slid off and the waves carried us down along the shoreline.

we made a horrible scraping as we encountered somebody’s…some kind of hanging-over-the-water bar thing, and then we arrived at the next dock.  more horrible scraping, and I finally was able to tie a line to their dock.  the wind continued to bang us around and I had mom get another line from the front of the boat as I hung onto the dock, and she stood out there bobbing up and down and I yelled SIT DOWN!  SIT DOWN!  because I was pretty sure she was going to fall overboard.  she did finally sit, and she got the rope, and we were tied up.

we tried flagging down the very few boats that were out on the water but nobody came to our rescue.

whew.  I called kevin again and told him where we were, and meanwhile I had mom go knock on their door.  she looked nice, because she always looks nice, and I looked like a hooligan because I only look nice when absolutely necessary.

I asked kevin to look up the lake police number, and he sent that to me.  I called a neighbor with a boat but they didn’t answer, and then another neighbor, but her husband was out of town and he was the only one who knew how to drive the boat.  she gave me another neighbor’s number – I could see his kids in the water down the way, so if figured he might be home.  nope, no answer.  I called the lake police, who told me that because we were secured to a dock and the water was so rough, they wouldn’t be coming out to get us, and it wouldn’t be a good idea for anybody to get us.

oh boy.

I called kevin for the millionth time and told him the address where we were and said BRING PAPER AND A PEN AND SOME TAPE to put a note on the people’s door.

as we waited for him to show up the wind started to die down, and pretty soon the waves weren’t really bad at all.  an old pontoon boat that looked a lot like ours drove by and I honked and we waved and yelled, and they finally came on over.  by this time kevin showed up with two big containers of rope, and they hooked us up and away mom and I went, bobbing behind the nice people.

so nice of them!

kevin drove home and was waiting patiently as we got to shore.

it was more harrowing in retrospect.  we could have hurt ourselves, could easily have fallen overboard, could have smashed our heads…kevin thinks it’s time to get a new boat.  the whole thing is a bummer, because new boats are not cheap, but used motors are not reliable.  a new motor would be disproportionally expensive.

vexing.

meanwhile, it’s a beautiful day today, and we’re supposed to have a couple more days break from the august-type heat we had in may.

whew.

ok then,

mrs. sunday evening hughes.