Manmade Disasters: The Titanic, Chernobyl, and Fishing with My Family and My Buddies

Now this post title may seem extreme. After all the other disasters resulted in multiple lives lost and millions of dollars that were never to be recovered.

I should admit up front that never have we killed anyone while fishing or boating.  There were times when the possibility arose in my mind, but we all survived, at least up till now. Having said that, we did experience a human death as you will see in an early story.

So who are the principals of fishing and boating?  No it isn’t misspelled. I have most of my experience with guys with whom I worked. Don, Paul, and Robert are the most frequent culprits. We all worked as principals, (school administrators by various titles) in the same school district. Each, in his own way, has made fishing most memorable and scary.  I have many family fishing adventures as well, and I will attempt to weave these in among the tales of woe which represent my life of fishing with the principals.

Fishing in a canoe

When I first met Robert, Don, and Paul, they all owned canoes. Paul also owned a small boat with an outboard motor. I had experience with canoeing, but it was mostly bad experience.

The first summer after I was hired as principal at Irving, Connie and I were invited to the annual Irving School Canoe Trip on the Mackinaw River.  This was a combination float trip and drinking affair. Unfortunately the participants were expected to canoe from the put in spot to the takeout spot, around several bends in the river.

I am not sure if it is my high center of gravity, or basic incompetence on the water, but Connie and I managed to tip over every year. She did not like this and eventually refused to canoe with me The last few years, we just joined the party at the end.

Robert and I went fishing several times the first years we worked together. These were trips on Dawson Lake and generally went well. After several trips on a lake with Robert, I began to think I could actually fish from a canoe. 

Then I met Don.

Don was such an avid canoer, he often carried it to work on the top of his truck. He asked me canoe with him on Lake Evergreen, which is much larger than Dawson Lake. The bigger lake had more wind requiring more control. Since I am much larger than Don, steering from the rear was difficult.  Result, dumped canoe.

Never one to give up, Don again asked me to go fishing in his canoe. This time we fished at the much smaller Dawson Lake. The wind was mostly calm and we managed to successfully reach the area across the lake near the dam.

As we approached the dam, Don spotted Paul with his son, in his boat with an outboard. We waved at them, but didn’t approach them. We fished until near dark with no incidents. We decided to head back to the boat ramp before dark. Paul and his son were still fishing when we left.

As we approached the dock, Don told me to grab the dock and pull us close. As I reached out, I felt the canoe start to roll over. In an instant it was upside down and we were soaked. We recovered our gear since the water was shallow and we were able to stand.

Unfortunately a canoe full of water is not easy to move. We struggled to right the canoe, but it didn’t move. Our major concern was that Paul would come back in and see we had made fools of ourselves and dumped the canoe.

It seemed like it took 30 minutes to finally slide the canoe on to the ramp and empty the water. We hurried to get the canoe on to Don’s truck and get away before Paul returned. The whole time were doing this, a man was sitting near the ramp on a park bench.

 We could hear Paul’s motor approaching as we got ready to leave, thinking Paul would never know. As we got into Don’s truck, soaking wet, I said “I’ll bet the first thing that guy says when Paul gets here, is ‘You should have been here earlier to watch these two clowns dump their canoe’”.

To quote Don, “I feel for Connie she thought she was going for an idyllic float trip down the Mackinaw and winds up drenched looking like she was in a wet tee shirt contest, smelling like lake bottom and having a soggy lunch. 

Canoeing with Rick is like having a bear sitting in front of you [a big bear] .  I am not a physics major but I figure Rick's center of gravity about 28 inches above his tail bone thus meaning any movement east or west results in an afternoon swimming. We all voted only to go out with him in at least a 17 foot, v-bottom bass boat.”

Don and I don’t canoe anymore.