Captain Dave's Wild Ride

Well, the 4th of July started out promising, but . . . here is a recap of what came to be known as "Captain Dave's Wild Ride"

Our friends Jeff and Angie came down from Pennsylvania for the weekend and as I mentioned in a previous post Hubby borrowed a boat from someone on his ship to use. So the plan was that we were going to take out the boat, meet our other friends with their boat and anchor in the harbor where we could watch the fireworks. Sounded good but right from the start things started going wrong. Before we even leave my mom has called and thinks she has a ghost, but that is another whole story.

When we got down to the pier our friends were taking their boat off the trailer. That went fine, but it seems that Captain Dave had backed the trailer a little too far into the water and the wheel had fallen off the concrete launch ramp so when he went to pull it out it was stuck. Four guys had to get in the water and basically lift the trailer up to get the wheel back on the ramp. Luckily they were able to do it. Hubby then launched our borrowed boat with no problems. Okay, ready to go right? Wrong!

We then realized that we had forgotten the girls life jackets. I though hubby had already put them on the boat and he thought I got them. At this point we didn't want to take the boat back out of the water, but no one else could drive it and we couldn't leave it docked at the launch pier because there were other people trying to put boats in. So our friends took Hubby over to the launch ramp so he could take the truck and go back to our house to get the girls life vests. Meanwhile we waited in the tied up boat at the boat rental dock. Then the friends were taking the girls and going to anchor right outside the jetty while we waited for Hubby to get back.

Well, while we are waiting this guy that works at the rental place comes out all frantic "You have to move, we have a sailboat coming in right now and they have to dock here." We told him we had no driver and he just says "Well, you have to figure something out because this sailboat is coming in now." I was going to call Captain Dave and see if he could walk me through starting the boat (I can drive a car, how hard can a boat be?) but I didn't have his cell number and when I tried his wife there is no answer. Then I decided to call Hubby and see if he could tell me what to do, but when I called his number I heard it ringing. He left his phone on the boat. Ugh! At least now I could call Captain Dave because hubby has his number in his phone. Captain Dave says they will come back but they don't show up and finally they call and say that their anchor is stuck on something and he is going to have to dive down and untangle it,! Luckily it is only 8 feet but jeesh what next! Right about this time this tiny little Styrofoam catamaran sailboat sails up and ties up right next to us. This is what the guy was freaking about?! We thought he meant a real sailboat not this toy.

Finally our friends called and said they were unstuck and on the way and they arrived right in time to pick up Hubby. Finally we are ready to go. Wrong again!

As soon as we start out Hubby says the engine on the borrowed boat doesn't feel right. When he has it on full throttle it is not even going that fast, so he decides that we better be safe and not mess with it so we have to go back to the pier again and put the boat back on the trailer and all pile in with our friends. So now their boat is filled almost to capacity. Surely nothing else can go wrong. Wrong again!

We got out to where we were going to anchor with no problems and there where quite a few boats out there too. The kids wanted to swim, of course. But right after they got in Captain Dave saw several large jellyfish so they had to get back in the boat. We had some snacks and soda's and hung out waiting for the fireworks that are supposed to start at 9:30. At about 8:45 we started seeing some lightening in the distance and we could hear on the radio everyone was asking the Coast Guard if the fireworks were still on and they said they were so we waited. Then at the last moment the announcement came over the radio saying that they were calling off the fireworks because of weather and everyone should disperse. Ugh! We got out of there fairly quickly and started back to the pier where we launched the boats. We had barely gotten 1/4 of the way back and we start hitting some choppy water and then it started to rain. The rain felt like hail pelting us in the face.

Let's recap, we have 4 small children, a tween, a dog, and 6 adults on this open boat. We are now in pretty choppy water being pelted by hard, cold rain, we are all soaked to the bone and we aren't even close to where we left the vehicles. Hubby and Captain Dave are trying to navigate so the rest of us grab a kid and hang on for dear life. I had Sydney and I covered her face with a towel so the stinging rain wouldn't hurt her and I would have covered my own face but by this time the boat was bobbing up and down so vigorously that I wanted to be able to brace myself for impact every time we crashed through a swell. Finally Captain Dave had to stop the boat because the rain was so bad he couldn't see where we were and after a minute the guys realized that we were closer to the shore (and rocks) than they had realized and the storm is pushing us even closer. Yikes!

Finally the rain let up and they maneuvered us away from the shore and headed us the right way. It was a little hairy there for a while I have to say. Luckily we had no other issues getting the boat back on the trailer. After she was off the boat Savannah informs us that she was just pretending to be scared on the boat. Kids can be so resilient.

We figured we left the fireworks spot about 9:45 and got in the truck to leave at 11:00. So the return trip that should have taken about 30 minutes took an hour an a quarter. Angie said we should name that boat the SS Minnow. We all decided that maybe the problems early on should have been a clue that this was not meant to be but in the end we have quite an adventure tale to tell.