Adventures in Don’s boat

Don has always been quite trusting of me with his boat. This amazes me as I have not demonstrated any understanding of the operation of a water craft. Boats do not act like land vehicles. They respond more slowly and are much affected by the wind, current, changes of positions of passengers, etc. Simply put, boats can be dangerous if one is not cautious. Don is a great guy with which to fish, but caution rarely enters his mind. For this reason, his wife, Pat, has never let him take his grand-kids out on his boat. Since his grand-kids are now in their twenties, and both former lifeguards, I used to think she was overly cautious. However she knows Don better than anyone.

Perhaps these few incidents had some impact on Pat’s reasoning.

Anytime we stopped to fish we would lower the trolling motor to maneuver at a slow speed. While fishing with Don at Lake Evergreen, we decided to move to a new location. Don fired up the big motor to drive across a lake. He forgot the trolling motor was down. As we approached the shore we hit a submerged tree limb breaking off the trolling motor. Fortunately he caught it before the motor sank. I call that tree the Don Memorial Tree. It is a really good crappie hole.

Every fall we started the year with an administrators’ meeting. When Dick was superintendent, he wanted us to tell what we had done that summer.  Don told how he and Paul had gone fishing at Banner Marsh in his boat. According to Don, he was peeing off the front of the boat and Paul started trying to rock the boat side to side. Don lost his balance and fell forward. He said he could see he was going into the water in slow motion. When he hit the water, he lost his prescription glasses. They couldn’t recover them. Now he carries a personal urinal in his boat.

One summer day, Don and I were fishing and had just left the dock, when I realized I had left the cooler in the truck. Don turned the boat around and headed back to the ramp. As we approached the ramp we saw a sheriff’s car sitting in the drive.

Don and I grabbed the dock and I jumped out. The female deputy got out of her car and started down. As she stepped on the dock, I stepped off. I flashed my fishing license at her as she approached. She said to Don, “You were driving pretty fast coming in here”. I continued up to the parking lot and didn’t see what happened next.

The deputy decided to go through everything in Don’s boat. She checked his license, registration. She checked the live well even though Don told her we had just arrived at the lake. She made sure he had a working fire extinguisher etc. Finally she had him open the battery compartment. Don had recharged the batteries before we left. The terminals have plastic caps on them and they have to be flipped up to charge the batteries. Don had failed to flip them back over the terminals. As I stepped into the boat she was finishing writing him a ticket for failure to replace the battery caps. She was enforcing her version of “protect and serve” because that battery sure needed protection.

Don has a mental check list he uses to make sure his boat and trailer are ready to go on the road. When returning from fishing, he recites this list to make sure he has everything connected and tied down. The list works well for him, except, like all of us, he likes to carry on conversation. When this happens he loses track of where he is on the list. Sometime he skips whole sections of the list. On more than one occasion, the part he skipped was to make sure everything on the deck was stowed below or tied down. The result was we had to trace our path back towards the lake to retrieve a missing seat or life jacket. Normally we know about where they are as one of us inevitably saw it fly out the back of the boat on to the road.

Over the years, Don’s boat showed signs of it age. Boat trailers have carpeted bunkers to protect the boat when it is on the trailer. The carpet covers wooden bunks. Don’s eventually rotted through. He failed to notice this situation. On the first launch of the spring we always go together for a shakedown to make sure everything is running correctly. As Don put his boat in the water, the side trailer bunkers floated away.

Perhaps the most amazing boat feat occurred one winter. After having his boat prepared for winter, he returned it to the garage. Somehow he hit something. Sometime later that winter he noticed liquid dripping out the bottom of his boat. The liquid was acid. Investigating he found a tipped over battery. I always remove my batteries, but that winter Don decided on advice of his mechanic that this was unnecessary.

A hole eaten through the hull is serious. When he told me I figured his boat was ruined. Fortunately the mechanic servicing his boat could weld aluminum. He welded a patch over the hole.

The mechanic tuned up Don’s motor and got it ready for spring fishing. As was our practice, I went along for his shakedown run on the boat. After putting the boat in Lake Evergreen, Don asked me to get in and start the motor to warm it up. He drove the trailer to the parking lot.

The boat is a tight fit for me, but I slipped down behind the console. I turned the key, but the boat wouldn’t start. This went on several times. We have had shakedown issues in the past with battery connections being reversed, or fuel not getting into the motor. The problem this time was Don had just had the boat serviced.

Don was pissed and said he was taking it back to the mechanic. We loaded the trailer and headed out. The mechanic’s shop was just five miles from the lake. As we pulled around back, the mechanic came out of the shop. Don told him the problem.

The mechanic said he didn’t understand why there was a problem. He had just run the motor and it was operating correctly. He walked over to the boat and looked inside. He reached in and flipped a switch. He said "you turned off the motor kill switch." He touched the key and motor started immediately. Apparently when I got in the boat my fat body had tripped the kill switch.

That mechanic is no longer in business. I wonder if boat owners like us contributed to his decision to quit.