Our first boat trip

WARNING: The following is a long and detailed story. I'm working on my story writing skills, so if you choose to read this, you'll have to bear with me. If you skip over it, I will not be offended. :-)



Last Thursday we went out on our boat for the first time. (For those of you who haven't heard, Kelly's brother gave us the old family boat--35 years old. But who cares how old it is? It runs!) There was a forecast of the possibility of thunder storms, but I didn't think too much about it. I figured the worst that could happen was we would get a few rain drops and be no worse for wear.



How wrong I was.



The first thing that went wrong was not related to the weather. Kelly and I were there with all the kids, so we let them sit on the dock while we launched the boat. I drove the car and trailer up to the lot while Kelly parked the boat at the dock. However, as soon as he stopped the boat, he looked over to see Katarina floating in the water, face down. She was trying to get her face up and turn over, but couldn't do it over the bulk of the lifejacket. His first instinct was to try to send Ariana after her, but Ariana is not a good swimmer. He frantically asked her to hold the boat, and without a second look back, he ran down the dock, jumped in the water and grabbed Katarina. She was fine and surprisingly calm. Luckily, Ariana succeeded in keeping the boat at the dock. So when I came down from the car I found Kelly and Katarina soaking wet and he informed me, "we've already had our first adventure." That's an understatement.



Next we got out on the lake. The clouds were fairly dark, but it wasn't cold so we decided to try out the tube we borrowed from friends. Kelly, Ariana and Kiara all got on and I drove while keeping an eye on Xander and Katarina. (Having to actually write this down makes it seem even worse. I swear we're not the worst parents in the world....) They had a pretty good time and I actually did o.k. driving the boat. I had the feeling that I should turn the boat around and not keep going further into the middle of the lake, but I was worried about how the turn would affect them on the tube and so I just kept going. Finally they signalled me that they were done, so I cut the engine and pulled them in.

The tube looked pretty fun and we had plenty of time, so I decided to try it out. I put on my jacket as we floated in the middle of the resevoir. Then the gust front from the thunderstorm hit. It was crazy--totally windy and the waves just kept getting bigger and bigger. We decided to head back towards the dock and Kelly had me drive so he could check something in the back. It was pretty bumpy, and then for some reason that I don't remember now, he told me to cut the motor. I pulled the engine back immediately. The wind quickly turned us parallel with the waves and we were rocking side to side.

"Turn us back," Kelly frantically told me. "This is how you capsize a boat!"

I pushed the stick forward and turned the wheel, but the boat didn't respond. My heart sank as I realized how quiet the boat was. It was dead. Quickly I turned the key in the ignition, but got no response. For all intents and purposes, we were stuck in the middle of the lake, with a boat that didn't work, in a perfect position to capsize with the next big gust of wind. This was when the panic hit me.

"Nothing's happening," I screamed back to Kelly. "The boat is dead."

He took another look at the engine. "It's flooded. We'll just have to wait."

Meanwhile, the kids had picked up on my panicked feelings. "We're lost!" Ariana wailed. The baby started crying and the girls screamed as the boat dipped past a large wave and water rushed in. The screams woke Kelly up to the panicked stated of his family and he began to reassure us all.

"It's going to be fine. The engine is flooded. We just have to wait and then we'll be able to drive back."

I chipped in to explain what a flooded engine was. My explanation wasn't correct, but it distracted the girls from their fear and allowed for a few minutes of peace. However, the whole time I was explaining to them, I was calculating what I would do if the boat capsized. How would I care for both Katarina and Xander? Perhaps Kelly would get Xander and I should get Katarina. But what if we both went for Katarina? Would we lose Xander in the lake before we could save him? No, I couldn't even contemplate such a thing. We were going to be fine. We were going to be fine. Surely, we would be o.k.

The boat started up after an eternity of worried thoughts and spilling waves. Kelly gunned it to get us to the docks. But as we had sat in the middle of the lake, the waves increased in size. Instead of the normal jolts of a fast travelling boat, we were hit by jarring impacts as we passed each wave. Occasionally the boat would catch air, only to land prematurely as the next wave swelled to meet it and push it upward again. Those times the impact was even more severe. The girls screamed louder with each impact and I struggled to hold on to Katarina. After one nasty landing, Kiara bounced off the seat and panicked as she couldn't get back on. I tried to reach for her with one hand, but she was too far away. If I bent to reach her, Katarina and I would go bouncing off the seat as well. Kelly slowed the boat and helped her back onto her seat and I showed her where to grab on so that she wouldn't fall. Then Kelly took off again.

I knew he was trying to get us home as quickly and safely as possible, but this was getting truly painful. Ariana cried, "My back hurts!" and I realized that mine hurt, too. In fact, my tailbone was killing me.

"Is there anything else we can do? This is truly painful, honey," I called back to him.

A little angered, he pulled the stick up quickly and the nose of the boat promptly dove into the next wave, soaking us all. "That's what will happen if I do."

We stared at each other in silence for a few moments as the boat continued to rock.

"I guess you could come sit in the back," he finally said. "It's not as bad back there and boat will eventually plane out."

We all found a seat in the back so he could take off once again. Each time the boat met another wave I cringed. My tailbone objected to each crash. I could have been sitting on a bare wooden board for all the comfort that ancient upholstery offered me. The girls were not comforted by their new positions, either. Their screams continued to raise in pitch and fervency. Suddenly the borrowed tube flew out of the boat. My wordless scream to Kelly alerted him and he once again pulled back on the stick. As he reeled the tube in by its rope, Kelly tried to explain things to the girls. It was no good. They were worked into a frenzy by this time. Obviously we needed a different approach.

"We'll try idling back in. I don't care how long it takes," he muttered.

So once more we continued our trek across the lake, this time at a slower pace. No more harsh impacts plagued our trip, but the nose of the boat did occasionally dip into an oncoming wave and water would wash down the boat. Kelly put the snap-on cover over the bow to minimize this problem and the taut canvas shielded the boat nicely. Then Kelly noticed the cozy cove created by the cover and asked the girls to crawl up under. They huddled together on the floor of the boat as we covered them with a partially soaked blanket.

They were doing so much better physically, but their spirits still suffered. Fear broadcast from their wide eyes as they looked back at us. Perhaps a hymn would help settle them.

The only one I could think of is "Master, the Tempest is Raging." Oh, well. It was still worth a shot. But I realized that I don't know that hymn as well as I'd hoped.

"Master the tempest is raging, the billows are tossing high,

The... sky is o'er shadowed with darknes, da dum da dum dum dum dum.

Carest thou not that we perish? How canst thou lie asleep?

When each moment so madly is threat'ning a... grave in the... angry deep..."

The chorus went a little smoother and the kids seemed to be calming down. Oddly enough, I felt more settled, too. But I only knew the first verse, so after singing that a couple of times, I settled for humming, and then finally thought of another song to sing.

The wind slowly died down as we completed the trip to the docks. Finally, the water was only disturbed by small ripples as I held the boat and Kelly went to get the car and trailer.

Our final mishap was trying to drive the boat onto the trailer. Kelly made the mistake of backing the trailer in quite close to the docks--leaving me less room for errors and corrections as I attempted to pull in. I tried a couple of times to line the boat up, but finally Kelly just pulled the hook way out and grabbed the boat. Finally, we were all back to safety.



Did I learn a lot of lessons from this trip? You bet. Do our kids like boating after their first adventure? No way. We'll have to work on that... when the weather is really, really nice.