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well, Dang... buddy lost his boat today..
212rowboat
Member Posts: 2,591 ✭✭✭✭✭
this morning this was a nice rig....
since then, it has rolled a couple times, lost it's T-top, and the console is a total loss- as in, uh, lost....
this belongs to a close friend of mine. He's lived on the water his entire life and has more time at the helm than most people have drawing air... he's an older fella... he is a captain of a shrimp boat, and he's held a commercial license since he was a kid.. I mean, the guy had a 60 ton certificate at one time for crying out loud...
the inlet here is nasty at times... we call it 'the washing machine' because between two islands points the waves have zero symmetry- they just come at you... I used to take my jetskiis out there to play- I once launched at least a 10' wave that was about to break on me, just to hit the water on the other side in a V of two waves that were just as bad- it was like riding a bronco for a bit there- and I realized if I were to have fallen off, my ski may have went one way, and I likely another- never to meet again... The very day before this incident, I followed a train worth of sportfishers fifteen miles out- according to my handheld magellan... It was glass from the dock to the 120 fathom curve, and wave freq's at least 300'... days like that are few and far between.. going back through the same inlet that gobbled my bud's boat (one of them, anyway) this morning I actually passed a tiller powered jon boat- I thought to myself then "Man, that's nuts- things can change quickly"...
this morning was beautiful... absolutely gorgeous.. water was predictable at the inlet, and current was inline with winds... good stuff.. a storm was to pass through around lunch... It was a blip on the radar that looked to be one of those ten minute deals, with no harsh colors on the doppler... so... maybe a bit of turbulence, right? no biggie.. at lunch I walked into lowes department store to buy some salt for my pool- and I ended up grabbing a few other things too... When I parked the truck and walked in there wasn't a cloud in the sky... while picking up the salt (outdoor center, but covered with that cool-er-oo fabric stuff so you can't see the sky) I thought I heard thunder... I figured it was the artillery impact area, which sounds just like thunder sometimes, depending on how thick the air is and which way the wind carries it... by the time i was inside, I knew it was thunder... when I walked out, the sky was slate blue and bruised- winds whipping, lightning like strobe lights... my thoughts turned to my bud, who had asked if I wanted to go... I never thought I'd be happy for a summer cold, before... I declined his offer.
I don't have all the details yet.. what i do know, is they were chasing the tide and in crazy shifting and STRONG winds... I know he lost power- engine locked up tight.. it was a single outboard.. and whatever happened- wave abeam, into the bow, pushing, I don't know, but w/o power, and in 'the washing machine', it could have been either and all at the same time... the boat performed water acrobatics before he could even turn the key... sea tow, which he has a subscription to but not because he figured he'd ever need it but because he was being nice to a franchise owner we know, came out and got him after the boat was shoved into a bar and anchored hard enough to stick... that little blip of a storm was an angry biyatch... it surprised an exceptionally experienced captain, and pretty much ruined that boat...
what you see in the pic is what it looks like now...
this is what it looked like a few days before, to the left on the lift:
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He's out there now looking for the console. He lost all his fishing gear, cell phone, wallet, keys, and of course everything else in or attached to the console. I'm glad they took interest in putting their jackets on before reaching for other stuff, and stuffing their pockets. He said it didn't seem bad, but he had a premonition enough to grab the jackets and a throw each.
He said the boat is a loss. It isn't financially worth salvaging.
It's been a mighty strange season this year. Weather, Jerks, tides and luck. He said he's lucky to be alive, and this ain't his first scrap, so I'm thinking I'll take every blip on the radar serious, and make for dang sure my engine is tip top before making a run through that inlet when the waves are kicking up. My logic is that it's better too learn from mistakes and happenings of others experiences so I don't have to encounter them myself.