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View Full Version : If not for the courage of the fearless crew the minnow would be lost!


Al_Capone_Junior
04-11-2004, 11:27 PM
I'm glad that title fit in the box!

So locally saturday brought one of the most violent and freakish storms to hit this area in a long, long time.

Winds at the lake saw gusts up to 60 mph and a very steady 30mph. The front hit like a ton of bricks. The "perfect" storm, if you will. I was at home at the time, outside in my little 18' camper trailer, when the front hit. I thought someone had come up to my little camper and tried to push it over.

But my bro was at medina lake at the time.

Now we have weathered the storm on medina before. Massive winds, rain, etc, hell, we're "experienced seamen." I've been boating since I was a little kid, my bro too. Our grandpa taught us on the great bay in south jersey. We can fish too....

But this was a freak storm.

Normally, we weather out squalls in either bob's cove or red's cove. They're both reachable with little effort, as the lake is 12 miles long, but never more than about a half mile wide. So there's really no storm that's all that dangerous on this thin, freshwater lake. The water is about 70 degrees at this time too, so even if you sank, it's not like it's the north atlantic or anything, and we are both good swimmers.

but saturday was different.

My bro and his buddy were fishin' out on the lake. They didn't know the storm was coming.

They had just bought a dozen minnows. It was cloudy and overcast, but it has been for days, and often that's when the best fishin' is. The dock they bought the minnows from is about 1/4 mile from red's cove.

The storm front hit like a ton of bricks. Tho there was no visible change in the cloud cover, the wind went from near dead calm to the back end of a jet plane in about 30 seconds.

So being of expoit seafaring stock, my bro smartly heads to red's. It's like two minutes and he's there. His buddy helps him tie up the boat. They get the front tied up, and then the wind gusts beyond all belief. The waves froth up to nearly 5' high in a matter of minutes. Despite the fact that they made the dock, it's of no use. The boat winds up getting swamped, and flips over, belly up in 8' of water.

D'oh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

His was not the only sunk boat. There were about six that we know of that went belly up, and one that totally sunk in 120' of water (that's how deep it is about 50 yards from shore at red's). Those people did manage to swim to shore, luckily, but their boat is now just a snag for fisherman's hooks.

So this is the story I got once my bro got to the payphone at red's. (the cell phones were both on the bottom).

So that's the setup...

It was raining and windy and like 45 degrees after that front hit yesterday, and it warmed up today, but at least it wasn't raining.

But it was not going to be a day of sitting around in the nice dry heat playing poker on the computer and sipping fine wine and eating cheese. It was time to join the polar bear club, or as close to it as I ever hope to get.

Well I wasn't getting in THAT water without a beer! It was frigging' COLD out there! So we stopped along the way and grabbed four 16 oz beers. Motivation!

We get to the lake and I can't see the boat. There's a dock, but no boat. But it's there alrightee, but all you can see is the tip of the centerline of the bottom of the boat. It's nearly completely submerged. But my bro's boat is full of foam, so it cannot sink. And ironically, it's still tied up to the dock!

So we "finagle" the boat from the 8' deep water by the dock to the 3' deep water by the shore behind the dock. All the while we realize that this careful posturing and maneuvering is quite useless, as we ARE going to have to go diving in the lake for the equipement that's 8' underwater, right under the point where the boat flipped over.

But we get the boat near the shore and realize that there's no sense delaying the inevitable.

We all take off our heavy jackets and jeans and boots and the like and get our swimming gear ready to go! Of course there's a slight drizzle and it's 45 degrees outside and the wind is still a steady 25 mph! FUN!!!

I am the bravest so I go in first. It's not that bad, the water is, after all, nearly 70 degrees. I get my feet wet, then my knees, then my thighs. But it's when the old raisin pouch hits the water that things get "a little dicey." A cold shriek pierces the air, kinda like a high pitched klingon death cry.

There was significant shrinkage! But it wasn't just me. All four of us went from raisin pouch to frank and beans to twig and berries just as soon as we were in above the thighs. COLD! Trauma! I hope no girls show up for this!

So (freezing our assess off), we try to flip over the boat. After all, it's only a ski-barge with a 48 horse motor, how heavy can it be?

Pretty frigging heavy, turns out. I am glad my one buddy answered his phone on easter morning, not realizing just how sorry he would be for doing so later that afternoon. Cuz without four of us, there would be NO chance of us having got that boat out of the water with just three guys. so, with three guys pulling and myself (up to my neck) lifting, we just barely managed to flip the boat back over.

Of course the battery had been hanging down, and the underside of the boat was filled with floaties, like the wake board, the life jackets, and various other assorted boating articles. We retrieved all that we could.

Amazingly, somehow the battery still had enough juice to fire up the bilge pump. So out went the water.

But into the water went I.

Cuz the one KEY piece of equipment that was on the bottom by the dock was the 1 7/8" ball we needed to get the trailer hitched to my truck. Someone else had dropped them off at the lake, and they kept the ball so I could pick them up on sunday.

But I didn't really plan on it like this.

So some nice people who live at red's lent us a mask and snorkel. So there's me, diving in eight feet of water in the freezing ass cold and rain.

But I found the ball, and even the crescent wrench used to put it on the trailer (I had brought a spare, btw, and we could have gotten a ball from a buddy's house nearby, but the fishin' poles were high priority, and also on the bottom of the lake). I also found a couple other pieces of equipment, and our fishing poles and retrieved them all.

So then we tied the anchor rope to the boat, and dragged it to shore, and onto the trailer. We tied it up and that was that.

The heater in the truck never felt soooooooooooooooooo good. We should all four have pnemonia by tommorow anyway, so this is probably my last post! /images/graemlins/grin.gif

And that's how I spent my easter sunday!

al

Al_Capone_Junior
04-12-2004, 09:51 AM
After getting the boat home and tearing the engine down, it seems there is going to be little or no real damage, except for possibly a blown regulator pack. No biggie!

We'll have that puppy back in the water by next week!

al

Sundance
04-12-2004, 03:06 PM
Sounds like 2+2 almost endured another "Perfect Storm"....Kudos for making the best out of a bad situations, Mr.Capone!!