Your water related stories

You paddled from Flushing to almost Bay City and back to Saginaw in one day? That is amazing. 

Ever since "Jaws," I can't go in the ocean. 

When I was 24, we went to St Thomas, US Virgin Islands.  We stayed in a hotel near the Cruise Ship port in Charlotte Amalie (here).  I rented a little 12' sail boat and sailed around the coast line to Lindbergh Bay Beach right by the airport.  We dropped anchor and swam around in the crystal clear waters.  Took a while to get there, and longer to get back, but I sailed on the ocean!

I bought a boat in 2020.  It is a 14 foot Jon Boat. The plan was to recreationally fish with my son on small lakes.  Outboard boat motors are really fickle and it seems nearly impossible to keep the thing running reliably.  It has been disappointing.  I am keeping it out of a matter of principle because it is a project that I am going to finish but in a word I would say owning a boat has been a lot of frustration.

Many years ago Mike, my former bro in law (now just my brother), and I were interested in waterfowl hunting.  He is a Michigan Tech grad and knew some of his old fraternity bros would be up there in the fall goose and duck hunting.  That summer I took the required hunter's safety course, bought a shotgun and some camo, went skeet shooting, etc.  The season came and we headed toward Houghton.  We hung out with Mike's friends and the time eventually came for the afternoon goose hunt.  They had obtained permission to hunt a dairy farm for the two hours during which the cows were inside being milked.  The cows came off the field and we ran out on to it, Mike and I dutifully following instructions on setting decoys and eventually getting beneath camo tarps.  Sure enough we saw some birds in the distance and Mike's pals called them in.  "Take 'em!" and the bedlam started.  Four birds down (none as a result of me).  The afternoon went like that until we had to pick up for the returning cows.  These guys were straight up pros!

That night there was a party at a cabin owned by the Tech forestry dept that someone had rented.  Everyone brought something genuinely good to eat, almost all of which was new to me.  Goose peppersteak, grilled grouse, stuffed mallard, brunswick stew with rabbit and squirrel.  Probably 40 guests, 10 dogs, several kegs, and lots of brandy.  The party went deep into the night and it remains one of the best times I've ever had.

Dawn the next day came very, very early.  But we got up, donned camo, loaded the truck and drove down the street to the boat docked on the Portage River (probably about a 1/2 mile wide at this point).  We loaded the boat.  Six guys (I was probably 180 lbs at that point and significantly lighter than anyone else), 3 sacks of decoys, 6 shotguns, a couple thermos's of coffee, and a very happy dog.  Mike and I were in the bow on a bench seat facing the stern.  We were underway in the dark and I was pumped (and a little hungover)! These guys were PROS! 

30 seconds later my ass was a little cold.  SHIT! We were taking on water! SHIT! We're going down!  It's freaking October in the northernmost point in the UP and we're swimming.  I'm gonna die!  Suddenly I hear someone say "everyone all right?"  Everyone was and someone had the presence of mind to distribute the five flotation cushions.  The sixth guy used a bag of decoys for flotation.  It was cold, but it was manageable.  We were probably a 200 yards from the dock and we started working our way back.  Everyone but the guy with the decoy bag.  There was just too much resistance for him to make any headway.  Fully dressed in jackets etc the going was hard and we kept hoping some other hunters would show up and drag us back.  I hung back with decoy bag, but I was getting cold.  I told him I was headed to shore, but if  no one showed up I would go back out and get him.  Sure enough, no one showed up.  I stripped to my longjohns and went back out.  Why me? Frankly I was in decent physical shape and no one else there was.  I went and dragged him back 150 yards or so and finally another hunter showed up and we got a boat ride for the final 50. 

We went to the bro in law's old frat house where several showers were available.  I warmed up as best I could then crawled into a sleeping bag and shivered hard for at least an hour before falling asleep. 

Everything was lost besides the boat, the dog (who remained happy throughout), and our lives.  The takeaway? Always think for yourself.  I've fished all my life and here is no way I would have loaded that boat like that.with that. But i got onboard without a second thought because those guys were pros.  They still are.  And I'm not bad either at this point, but everybody makes mistakes.

Cheers

When I was 6 or 7, we got home from swimming in Lake Huron. My grandpa kept asking us 'You swam in lake Urine?" in such a way that we thought he said Huron.

We would gleefully admit it, he would chuckle and we didn't get it.

Went cage diving with Great White Sharks at Guadalupe Island two years ago. Five days on a boat in the middle of nowhere. About 130 miles from the nearest land. Easily the most spectacular experience of my life. The sharks were constantly around the cages and were so majestic and beautiful. At no time did I ever feel in danger. I would love to visit Australia and cage dive there.

Back in 2015 I decided to take my 37 foot Rinker up from Middle Bass Island on the southern shore of northwest Lake Erie  accross the lake, up the Detroit river, across Lake St. Clair, up the St. Lawrence seaway and finally into Lake Huron to visit my brother who has a place in Brights Grove.  I actually posted a bunch of pictures of that trip here back in the day but that's another story.

Anyways, the trip was uneventful heading north and we made it to the Sarnia Yacht club in about 7 hours or so.  Had a nice weekend on the water (Huron was calm and weather was nice) and we headed for home around noon on Sunday.  Everything was fine until we got into the middle of Lake St Clair when a fogbank rolled in and reduced visability to near zero.  My boat had radar & GPS so I wasnt too worried about going off course but I know the channel is narrow and full of freighters so we had someone on the bow & off the stern looking for any movement.

We hadnt gone 20 minutes in this soup (travelling at about 3-5 MPH) when a speedboat going at least 30 crossed my bow no more than a couple of feet from hitting us.  The insanity of nearly colliding with a boat travellling that fast in zero visability shook everyone pretty good.  Fortunately the fog lifted shortly later and the rest of the trip was just fine.  But to this day I cant understand why someone would be going that fast in that poor of visability.

One note - at a constant speed of about 25-28 MPH it took me 7+ hours to make the journey upstream.  But at the same speed going downstream we got home in just over 4 hours and that was with a large portion of time near zero due to the fog.  That current is strong!

Water Story #1. During my forest fire fighting days in Oregon, on a day off, I took a solo hike to a waterfall in the backwoods. It was a small one, a semi-circle off a cliff about 20' high into a round pond only about 30' round. Behind the sheet of falling water was a small space, more indentation than cave, with no way to get to it by land on either side. The water, snow runoff, was too cold to swim so to float to the little cave behind the water, I got on a log. Knowing it might roll, I tucked a smaller branch under my leg to stabilize things. Paddling across, I enjoyed standing behind the sheet of water. 

The force of the water pushed the branch away but I figured it was no big deal getting back. It was only 30' back. So I got on the log. Just as I thought in the first place, it rolled and dumped me. Either the icy-cold water or panic immobolized my body. All these years later, I'm still not sure how I got to the shore.

This was a good thread from last year:

https://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/ot-friendly-reminder-about-our-great-lakes

Water Story #2. Year's later, I was in Hawaii on a schooner, thanks to a gift from a well-off aunt and uncle. Out of Maui, it was the Lavengro no motor, just sail, with eight of us, two couples, a single woman, me,the captain and first mate/cook. (It's a historic boat, now based in Seattle.)

The first day I was really sick, could barely move, while the others were fine. I definitely did NOT impress the gal, who for some reason wasn't attracted to guys who were green (and who was keen on the captain anyway.) But it was great sailing among the islands for a week, taking turns at the wheel so actually sailing the boat.

Then on the day we had to get back, all the others had food poisoning. I hadn't eaten much, so I was okay. But we had to get back to catch a plane to Honolulu. So, there I was, still a novice and only the mate to help as he struggled to handle the sail, I actually sailed that sucker to Maui.

From total washout to feeling like the captain, it was exhilarating.

Not a boat story but I almost drowned when I was about 6 years old.  Our family rented a cabin with another family on a lake up north.  My dad was supposed to be watching me but he failed. I went walkabout with the girl my age in the other family.  I remember we were on the boat dock and one of us had a baby tooth fall out that fell into the water.  I tried to reach it for the tooth fairy, and fell in the water.  Not sure how deep it was but to me it was at least 2-3 times my height and I could not swim yet.  I remember going up and down a few times and getting my feet in the mud at the bottom to push upwards.  I was drowning and some stranger guy pulled me out and saved my life.  Coughed up some water afterwards.  My father told me never to tell my mother, but I finally did about 40 yrs later after he died. 

I also remember that same vacation, the two dads went out fishing and got caught in a thunderstorm.  After much gnashing of teeth with the kids and moms, they came back in safely in the wind and pouring rain.  So basically three people almost bought the farm on the same vacation.   

she woke me up in the middle of the night , said her water broke. She yelled at me to run red lights on our way to IU west hospital.. 

When I was 15 years old my father founded an aluminum boat manufacturing company-we had moved, several years earlier, from Northern Indiana to Pinckney. About 5 years later he sold it to the father of a childhood friend-who had established JAYCO. Our family moved back to Indiana to run the boat side of JAYCO. Several years later dad repurchased the boat part. Fifteen years later the business was doing quite well for us-Bayliner came calling and dad sold them the business...and he retired. It is fair to say that water, rather dramatically, changed the course of our family's life.

Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into her side, Chief. We was comin’ back from the island of Tinian to Leyte. We’d just delivered the bomb. The Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in 12 minutes.

Didn’t see the first shark for about a half-hour. Tiger. 13-footer. You know how you know that in the water, Chief? You can tell by lookin’ from the dorsal to the tail. What we didn’t know, was that our bomb mission was so secret, no distress signal had been sent. They didn’t even list us overdue for a week. Very first light, Chief, sharks come cruisin’ by, so we formed ourselves into tight groups. It was sorta like you see in the calendars, you know the infantry squares in the old calendars like the Battle of Waterloo and the idea was the shark come to the nearest man, that man he starts poundin’ and hollerin’ and sometimes that shark he go away… but sometimes he wouldn’t go away.

Sometimes that shark looks right at ya. Right into your eyes. And the thing about a shark is he’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When he comes at ya, he doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til he bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’. The ocean turns red, and despite all your poundin’ and your hollerin’ those sharks come in and… they rip you to pieces.

You know by the end of that first dawn, lost a hundred men. I don’t know how many sharks there were, maybe a thousand. I do know how many men, they averaged six an hour. Thursday mornin’, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boson’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. He bobbed up, down in the water, he was like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist.

At noon on the fifth day, a Lockheed Ventura swung in low and he spotted us, a young pilot, lot younger than Mr. Hooper here, anyway he spotted us and a few hours later a big ol’ fat PBY come down and started to pick us up. You know that was the time I was most frightened. Waitin’ for my turn. I’ll never put on a lifejacket again. So, eleven hundred men went into the water. 316 men come out, the sharks took the rest, June the 29th, 1945.

Even though I grew up in sailing-obsessed Grosse Pointe, my immediate family had zero involvement with boating—our vacations always involved spending the summer up in the mountains in Colorado, not going up to some lakeside cottage in northern Michigan. I never was infected with the boating virus, and I never had any interest in pursuing it.

One reason is that in my very limited experience with other boaters, they're frequently nuts. 

In the summer of '84 my wife was 7 months pregnant, and she was already very uncomfortable. Her best childhood friend lived in the A2 area and her husband was a freshly-minted family practice doctor. On dry land, this guy was the nerdiest, most risk-averse kind of guy you can imagine, but we found out his other side was a bit different.

We visited them at the lakeside cottage that her husband's family had, and he persuaded us to take a ride on the family speedboat. My wife has even less interest in the water than I do, but since it was just a pretty small lake, we figured what's the harm.

The boat wasn't very large; it didn't have a cabin so we were all seated in the open. I can't remember whether it had outboards or inboards, but as soon as we left the dock mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll transformed into Mr. Hyde as he mashed the throttle.

In short order we were flying across the water at breakneck speed, and there was just enough chop that all of us were bouncing up and down hard every few seconds. My wife was terrified that the repeated impacts were going to endanger the baby, and I was terrified she was going to fly out of the boat altogether since there were no seat belts. Meanwhile Mr. Hyde, the erstwhile mild-mannered physician, was maniacally whooping and hollering in joy.

Mercifully the ride lasted only a short while—I think the skipper could tell that the wife and I weren't sharing his enthusiasm for bouncing up and slamming down like we were on a sadistic carnival ride.

We subsequently learned from my wife's friend that all of his family are like this—they're all a bit crazy, especially out on the water.

What's ironic is that Mr. Hyde has ended up being my personal physician for over 30 years, and as Dr. Jekyll, he's a confirmed ovo-lacto vegetarian who's tried without success to get me to give up dairy, eggs, and meat, in favor of a plants-only diet. The contrast of that with his boating alter ego is amazing.

Yeah. Golf tournament down in Florida. I hooked my ball in the rough down by the lake. Damned alligator just POPPED up, cut me down on my prime. He got me, but I tore one of that bastard's eyes out though. Look at that.

 one serious story, one fun story: 

1.  in socal the colorado river is like a long, winding 50-150 yd wide ski run.  sometimes it can be empty, or quite busy.  coming back from a day on the water two boats near us do a head-on, both at speed.  pow!  we race over there and it is a calamity, pieces of boat and contents everywhere.  people in the water.  one guy is floating away, looking kind of dazed, not saying anything.  not good, not good.  i jump in the river and grab him and swim him over to the back of our boat.   i look down and realize one of his legs is totally snapped about mid-shin, tib-fib break and that part of his leg is literally just waving in the water with the current.  

i splint his leg as carefully as i can with a canoe paddle and as other boats come by (pre cell phone era) we tell them to get to the launch and get 9-1-1, dude was going into shock.  we made it back, got him in an ambulance and was told later they saved his leg. 

2.  also socal, fishing on my old boat out in the pacific.  i'm up in the flybridge, sun shining, two of my best buddies on deck, cold beer, and we are trolling through tuna and getting bites - fish on! .   but, but, but, a gangster shooting goes down (on land, of course) and i need to do a telephonic search warrant as we are tracking bad guys.  cell phones to the rescue.  so we get a judge, a court reporter, and my lead homicide investigator on the phone all while trolling for tuna and we've got a fish on.  the convo goes something like this:

XM: your honor, we have everyone we need and we can proceed.  madam court reporter, please swear the detective in. (she does so)

XM: (covering phone): billy, grab those other rods and reel them in. 

XM: detective, could you please state your occupation and your training and experience as it relates to gang homicides and investigations (he goes on to provide that record)

XM (covering phone):  i'm going to back down on that fish, get the gaff ready

and on it went.  that was back in the day when a telephonic search warrant and cell phones were pretty cutting edge, thus a memorable afternoon. 

I'm a water operator so I'll go a different way with this and tell you something about water you might not. Most tap water is better for you than any bottled water,and is safer for you. Also, the vast majority of bottled water is tap water ran through their filter. Usually reverse osmosis. 

Canoeing on the Pere Marquette with some buddies and about a hundred other canoes 40+ years ago. Come around the bend and there is a pile up of canoes stuck on a cedar tree growing out of the bank. The first canoe on the tree is actually two canoes tied together with a keg of beer in one. We are now hung up sideways with the rest when another canoe slams into us, almost smashing all of my fingers on my left hand. A pregnant woman in this canoe starts freaking out and grabs my canoe, opening it up to the current. We quickly filled with water and our canoe sunk to the bottom, finally getting wedged under the cedar tree. I'm now standing in neck deep water between two canoes. Eventually all were unjammed and a couple good Samaritans helped us get our canoe off the bottom. It was a twisted mess, but we finished the trip. Haven't been in a canoe since!!

Long time ago, galaxy far, far away.

I'm sitting in the bow of a then-old wooden row boat with an old Evinrude 5 HP outboard clamped on the stern, blowing blue smoke, driven by a close friend, same age. Must have been about 9 or 10 years old. Suddenly? Fire starts in the motor (remember the gas tank is in the top of the engine of these engines, so "boom" is a *definite* possibility").

My young brain screams "abandon ship" but I am suddenly fascinated by my friend trying to put out the fire with a coffee can filled with lake water; he's basically trying to "blow out the fire" with the pressure. I can't miss this show! I'm terrified and transfixed!. Friend finally blows out the fire, we laugh like young fools, and paddle back to the dock.

Guy goes on to be the lead engineer for jet engines for GE; after running over my foot with his car at Woodstock; then my business partner for the last 8 years.

There are more stories - but they involve chine walking at close to triple digits in deep-V bottom race boats. Definitely make your sphincter tighten while you try to lay the boat on a chine to stop the wigglies.

It was the late 60's and our parents decided to take our 18' speed boat to Boblo Island. This involved being in both the Detroit River and on Lake Erie for a bit. We had to go behind a large freighter which put up a pretty large wake. I would have been 10 or 11 years old and had the audacity to ask my Dad if he knew what he was doing while we were bobbing around in the wake of the freighter. I damn near died from the look that he gave me. Anyway, we made it to Boblo and back safely, but I always remembered actually questioning Dad's abilities and thinking I was going to either get dumped in the river or get the hell kicked out of me for running my mouth. 

there’s 25 years of stories involving me and my wife and water …. not telling those but boy are they fond memories 

i saved my son from drowning in the Gasconade river in Missouri. pretty important one there

for my brothers bachelor party, we canoed the Pere Marquette with an insane amount of alcohol and drugs. By the time we got to the finish we had sunk the canoe 4 times and had to drag it up off the bottom of the river. He lost his glasses, hat, shoes, and wallet. we drank all the alcohol and took all the drugs. 4 hour canoe ride took almost 8 hours. we were young and that is an awesome memory, but man that was fucking stupid.

Im mostly water

When I was 10, our wooden 1963 Chris Craft cabin cruiser fucking sunk right in Pigeon Lake, near Port Sheldon.   We managed to get it into a low depth of water and near enough to a friends dock, that it could all be salvaged and back at "sea".   But that was scary for a 10 year old. 

I was in Hawaii on business quite sometime ago. It was a gorgeous day as most are in Honolulu. So, I grabbed a boogie-board and fired out into the ocean. Paddling like I just escaped from Alcatraz, I went way the hell out there.

The squalls were really big so I kind of lost my bearings. I was getting tossed around like a hacky-sack. I dipped way down and when I came back up, seemingly from another dimension, a military grade dingy appears, with these guys frantically yelling,
“Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”

Get out of the way of what? I’m a mile out in the ocean.

Another dip and elevation and a helicopter appears with a camera guy hanging out the door shooting me.

Then, clearly from the same dimension as the dingy, all these dudes on surfboards materialize and these big fibreglass boards start whizzing by my head.

There’s no way they could see me. So I thought I was likely to get decapitated. And, because  would it be caught on tape, I’d end up as a GIF or meme with my noggin flying through the air captioned,”Hold your head high” or Head’s Up.”

I found out later that I had apparently boogie-boarded my way right into the middle of some weird ass triathlon that was being broadcast live on ESPN.

I imagined the announcers saying, “Some absolute moron has paddled his way right into the middle of the course! That idiot is likely to get killed out there!”

“So right, Buzz, That attention seeking clown is taking stupid to the next level.”

Fortunately the idiot boogie-boarder managed to dodge all the surf boards and I did not end up as a GIF.

When I made it back to shore, quite a had gathered to watch the swimming leg of the event.

Again they were coming toward me, but it was way less scary and I could see them coming so I managed to avoid making a spectacle of myself - this time at least.

There are so many... but one comes to mind.   I was snorkeling with the girl I would later marry off a secluded beach in Hawaii when a reef shark came up from behind me and passed a couple feet to my right.  I was so startled that I sucked in a huge amount of water and ended up coughing it out for the next 5 minutes.  Once the water was out, expletives followed.

My "concerned" wife-to-be simply laughed like she never laughed before, thinking this was the funniest thing in the world.

Addendum to my Jaws comment: my family went to Acapulco when I was in 4th grade (pre-Jaws). Everyone wanted to go waterskiing in Acapulco Bay so away we went. When it was my turn, I hopped in the water and was up in no time. Everything was going great but my 9 year old self was starting to get tired. I was afraid to let go of the rope because I knew there were sharks in the water, my family had already talked about it. The spotter was keeping one eye on me and one eye on everything else. I finally couldn't go any longer so I let go of the rope and then watched the boat head away from me at top speed. I was treading water with my skis on, and the boat still hadn't seen me. I started waving my arms and then finally, the boat made a u-turn. Those minutes (and I'm sure they were few) were some of the longest of my life as I waited for them to come get me. The next day, we were back on a boat in Acapulco Bay and passed by three tiger sharks that were swimming at the surface. My body still tenses thinking about it, almost 50 years later. Sharks were all around me.