Your water related stories
XM-MT's response in the Gordon Lightfoot thread about mooning the Edmund Fitzgerald reminded me of an encounter I had while canoeing, and I know plenty of you have interesting stories of a time you were in or on the water. Please share your story with the rest of the board.
Over 40 years ago, a buddy and I decided to canoe to Lake Huron. We started on the Flint River in Flushing.
Our fist issue was as the Flint river ended, it didn't just flow into another defined river. It flowed into the Shiawassee Wetlands where there was no clear channel to follow. We knew we needed to head east, and we tried to follow what little flow of water we could find, but it took us a good hour of meandering before we found our way to the Saginaw River.
Our next encounter is what XM's story reminded me of. I believe we were near the Grey Iron foundry when we noticed a ship was heading up river. We were hugging the right shore but debated whether to get out of the river to let the ship pass. We took that course and were glad we did. The ship's wake wasn't super huge, but it probably would have swamped us.
Our 3rd encounter was the most interesting. We made it past the I 75 bridge as it was getting dark and made camp for the night. The next morning it was much cooler and the wind was howling. We got in the river with hopes of making it to Lake Huron, but paddling as hard as we could, we remained stationary. The minute we stopped paddling, we moved backwards. The Saginaw river was flowing backwards! My buddy's shoulder was bothering him , so we went to shore to figure out what to do. We realized our only option was to go up river. I sat in the back using my paddle as a rudder. My buddy sat in the front not using his paddle at all. We went up river at a very fast clip, no paddling needed. I remember seeing the face of one of the bridge attendants who spotted us. I interpreted his grin as his thinking "what are these idiots doing?"
Anyway, we made it back to Saginaw and called his brother to pick us up. We never made it to Lake Huron, but it was quite the adventure.
my son and his wife bought an old house.... i got a call that they had a water line with a pinhole in it, spraying a mist of hot water into their basement. I walked him through putting an emergency patch on the hole and spent the next weekend replacing all their galvanized waterlines with pex.
that's my water story.
Pics or it didn't happen.
Many years ago, I got lost in the Everglades in a small boat. Wasn't long before I saw the first gator. 10 footer. In a matter of minutes I was almost completely surrounded by them, seemingly anticipating their next meal. My boat promptly ran out of gas, and I used a makeshift pole to push my boat over to a piece of dry land. Just as I got out of my boat a massive gator launched at me from behind some brush, and I woke up sweating in my bed up in Tallahassee!! Awful experience!!
This is only confirmed alligator fatality in Texas since 1836.
History.
Crocodiles are more dangerous…just sayin.
Florida man
Comedy.
Lots of amazing lake memories in Michigan, but the most fun I have ever had on water was kayaking down the rapids in Stanley, Idaho.
Please don't tell anybody about Stanley. As I recall, your enjoyable memory happened on the Upper Yough outside McHenry, MD. Let's go with that story. K thanks.
I skied at Big Sky in Montana a couple of years ago. The locals had bumper stickers that read:
Big Sky sucks! I heard Vail is nice.
Water? I hardly know her!
Rectum? He damn near killed 'em!
Not a water story but more of a question. Has anyone kayaked to Turnip rock? I guess it is a potentially dangerous trip as a few have died doing it recently because lake Huron can change very quickly.
Plus, you have to launch quite a ways either east of it or west of it, because it is private land on both sides for a long distance. Anyone have recommendations on the trip (where to launch from, how long it takes, are 10ft kayaks good enough)?
Many people complain about the surrounding landowners, but after years of picking up trash off the rocks and beach and being cascaded with drunken profanities, they aren't too accommodating to people who get stuck out there. Most of the kayakers are just fine but some are complete slobs.
Yes, i do see their point. Same thing with Torch Lake. Property owners HATE the pile up on the sand bar every summer weekend. They trash the lake slowly.
I've never done it personally, but know several who have. It's about a 2 mile paddle, one way. Launch out of Port Austin and head east.
I hope you were safe in Saginaw
(I lived there many years ago. It wasn’t safe then, and I suspect it’s not much better now)
If he was just past the Zilwaukee bridge he was fine That is Cheboygan creek area - no houses, a long park and water on both sides. Of course he probably didnt make it far enough to get to the park im guessing. Fairly safe there - no residence as its all wetland but a thin strip of road going from BC to Sag.
Yes. That is where we pitched out tent, just down river from the bridge. It was on the south side of the river and it was a very large grassy area, I'm guessing a.flood plain. I think this was the summer of 1980 so my memory is not perfect. But I think it had rained quite.a bit so the Flint river had fewer shallow points and was flowing at a good pace.
Yes. That is where we pitched out tent, just down river from the bridge. It was on the south side of the river and it was a very large grassy area, I'm guessing a.flood plain. I think this was the summer of 1980 so my memory is not perfect. But I think it had rained quite.a bit so the Flint river had fewer shallow points and was flowing at a good pace.
You’re memory must be going as you are repeating your stories now!
Saginaw is not the greatest city, but it’s really not that bad. As long as you’re not looking for trouble you are fine.
Just curious. Which part of Saginaw do you live?
I had a glass of it….
I’ll see myself out
I see bottles of it everywhere.
I was jumping waves on a wave runner with my friends off the Jersey shore in the Stone Harbor area. I hit a big wave and came up off the wave runner and landed head first on the handle bar. The cut on my chin was big enough to need some stitches but not a big deal. We drove home to the philly area and I went to the hospital to get stitched up. A few days later I get an arrest warrant in the mail for crashing a motor cycle through a store's plate glass window and leaving the scene of a crime. I called the police and told them what really happened and they didn't believe me. I actually had to go to court with witnesses to get out of it. I've never driven a motor cycle in my life.
How did it go from getting stitches in a hospital to having an arrest warrant on an unrelated incident? The cops were just fishing the hospitals?
Yep, just lazy police work looking for teenager that was cut up. I couldn't believe the response from them was "see you court". I actually had to hire an attorney.
When you prove your innocence, can you bill the police? That is such BS.
I could have gone after them for something but it was recommended that I don't if I was going to continue living there.
When you prove your innocence...
It's sad that "Guilty until proven Innocent" is too often the case. Someone gets cut up the same day of a motorcycle crash and the lazy detective has solved the case!
1. At about 7 years old I was being pulled behind our 14' aluminum fishing boat whilst sitting on a toboggan. The toboggan was attached to the boat and all I had to do was hold a short rope which was attached to the toboggan - which my dad told me not to let go of. In a wave, the front of the toboggan went under, causing it to essentially be a vertically oriented planar board and down it went. I obeyed and didn't let go. My dad wasn't watching and so on he drove with the boat's pull making the toboggan go deeper. I went down to the bottom (about 10 feet) got covered with weeds before the boat stopped and I bobbed up. Wouldn't go deeper than waist deep in any body of water for about 2 years after that.
2. By the time I was 17 we had a more sophisticated speed boat (19' Sea Ray closed bow). My 19 year old sister wanted to take some friends down the Grand River to Grand Haven for a fun trip. At some point she ignored the channel bouys and ran it on a sand bar at about 40 miles an hour. (no one was hurt seriously) In a time of no cell phones, it took a while before the news reached home. I was the only one who thought it was funny.
3. Watched a person at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids back their boat into the river without unlatching the straps holding the back of the boat to the trailer. Back in, boat floats the trailer off the bottom, current pulls the van into the river. Guy driving swims out the window and, with friends, proceeds to try to lasso the van from shore to keep it from going down over the dam. Van gets caught on some underwater obstruction.
Boat launch ramps provide the *best* examples of human silliness. You can make an entire day or weekend of it!
When I was maybe 8 or 9, I was on a boat in Lake Huron - near Cheboygan - with my parents and some friends of theirs (it was their boat, we were just along for the ride). We had come across from Charlevoix, where we had been vacationing, to meet them after my dad found out they were in northern Michigan as well (my dad worked with this guy at GM at the time).
Between the terribly long drive and a lack of fondness for the sea life, as it were, I wasn't too thrilled, and neither was my mother, but in a rare bit of unquestioned cooperation, she went along with this idea, and onto the boat we went and so on out into the lake.
Rough water on the Great Lakes is no joke, and while it wasn't so rough that this small vessel that had an underside cabin just large enough to stand in, but with a nice kitchenette and what could be described as a cot for two, couldn't be out there by rule, it was not exactly calm. Before long, my mother, who has motion sickness, had seen enough of the lake and moved to go inside, inasmuch as that was possible on this craft.
She stopped in the doorway, held the door jamb for a moment as if to turn and say something. It was at this moment that a wave tilted the boat enough to close the door - on her fingers. The snap was audible, the scream even more so. Fortunately, the wife of my father's friend had been a frontline nurse in Vietnam, so using the first aid kit plus some items from the kitchen, she very quickly made a splint for two broken fingers.
The hour-long sail back to shore was awkward, quiet, almost as if my mother had perished at sea on that very boat. In a way, she did, for she has - to my knowledge - not been on a boat that wasn't docked since. Finding medical care of the caliber we were used to in that part of Michigan was....not easy, but we did get to a hospital and she did get a more formal splint / cast put on her hand.
The drive home the next day was...well, the car was like a mobile mausoleum. Sure, we would go up north many, many times more as a family, but the closest we would get to open water from that moment onward was the beach.
Canoeing in the Huron River from the canoe livery in Argo Park to Gallup Park, before the cascades were installed. Wife and two young children were with me in the canoe. Current was quick and as we were passing the Arb I made a rocket scientist decision to go around an island rather than staying in the main current. Oops - canoe capsizes, everyone goes in the water, lost a pair of shoes, clothing all wet, wife was livid, children were aghast. If looks could kill... Got to Gallup Park safely but quietly.
Off to Jacobsons to replace the lost shoes. Down US-23 to Toledo to visit my sister at her new apartment which had a pool. Get there, it's raining cats and dogs, sister warns that the pool has a very high chlorine content just then. Perfect - everyone into the pool with clothes on for decontamination, followed by showers and laundry. Kids loved swimming in the pool with all their clothes on. My sister opens a bottle of wine and my wife decompresses.
Thirty years later and we all laugh about it - finally.
GP Chareles, your best water story is that you tipped a canoe? I think you need to get out more ;) j/k
I dunno, Champeen. It feels as if this is more than a canoe-tipping story. It may be a tip-a-canoe & Tyler too.
Sorry. I couldn't resist the pun. But seriously, it seems to me a story of canoe-tipping AND the shock of you kids suddenly in the water AND a spouse's understandable annoyance.
Getting friends wet while playing is one thing. It's totally different dunking the wife while she trusted you to keep her kids safe and her dry.
Is GP Grosse Pointe? Then there must be a story of taking your boat to Brownies on The Lake.
For those novices who want to canoe the Huron River, Skip's Huron River Canoe Livery, by the Metropark/Border to Border trail on the way to Dexter, is worth checking out.
I have a multitude of Lake St. Clair boating stories - such as, crossing the lake from Mitchell's Bay in Canada to GPYC in the middle of an October night in a 37' Roamer with no working lights other than a flashlight. We were coming back from a duck shoot so multiple shotguns on board. The other 3 in the boat were of no help whatsoever, having been overserved. Crossing the freighter channel was an exercise in fright management. Thankfully there was no Homeland Security Department in those days.
Last call for happy hour at the Old Brownies ordering a case of long-neck Buds. They sold them but they opened each of the 24 bottles. We gave most of them away to young ladies.
The lingerie show at the Bell Bouy in Puce Canada - now that too was an interesting ride back across the lake.
Now those sound like good stories! Didn't have a boat or guns, but enjoying to the Windsor ballet and being legally able to drink Cinci cream ale as a high schooler was some fine living producing some stories than I will take the 5th on.
I was part of a co-ed relay team for the General Clinton Canoe Regatta on the Susquehanna River for several years. Our team sucked and always finished near the bottom. One year it rained hard for 3 days consecutively prior to the race so on race day the river was swollen and humming. We finished in 2 hours less than normal. Still finished near the bottom but that boat was moving that day and I felt like we could tip and drown at any moment
When I was dating my wife (25 year anniversary next Tuesday, so this is an old story), she wanted me to meet her family; so they set up a day on a fishing charter boat in Lake Michigan. I was already a little bit nervous, but as we were headed there from the other side of the state, there were reports on the radio of high winds and rough waters.
We got to the docks and the water was pretty gnarly looking. In any event, the captain decided that we could still head out. I made it about 10 minutes before I spent the next 4 hours completely green and losing my breakfast everywhere and anywhere. To compound the problem, some wiseguy thought it would be a great idea to start cooking bacon about 30 minutes in; which just made me that much more nauseous.
It all worked out in the end. I took her family to a Michigan game that fall and I cooked the bacon at the tailgate....on land. Also, I've been on 5 non-nauseous cruises with her since then. I just avoid fishing charter boats at all costs.
Classic old footage of the WLAV Grand River Raft Race in GR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1wPRZmno5c
Alas liability got in the way of a good time.
I did this a couple of years as a college student in W Michigan, late 70's. We hammered together rafts that would hold chairs and a nice keg of Cinci, and off we went. It was hundreds of drunken fools floating along - enjoying watching other people's rafts fall apart and people swimming after their kegs - until their own did. It is mind-blowing to think of he liability. Not sure if there were ever any fatalities, but if not it was a miracle.
A number of years ago I participated in the Chicago Mackinac boat race. The oldest guy on the boat was 18, so we didn’t have much experience.
I was at the helm on the first overnight shift and there was absolutely no wind. We were 50 miles out in Lake Michigan and it was calm as glass and the fog was thick.
Most of the crew was asleep when I start to hear the churning of a freighter’s motor in the distance. The fog was so thick I couldn’t see any lights. I could only hear this churning getting louder and louder.
I woke up the guy whose dad owned the boat, and we immediately tried to hail the freighter. No response. It kept getting louder and louder. By now everyone is awake and still can’t see anything. Finally, as the motor is at its loudest, we start getting into the wake of the freighter, and then the churning starts to subside. We never saw the boat, lights, nothing,
The big lake is one of my favorite places on the planet, but it can be super creepy sometimes. I guess that might lend to its charm.