My last blog entry was about a tour boat
sinking from beneath me in Jamaica but I have had several
other dangerous and even life altering experiences on the water. My first
encounter of the wet kind occurred when I was just a boy in my teens living in
Montreal. I had learned how to swim in my new high school’s forty foot pool
only a few weeks earlier. I was a late bloomer in that sense. Most kids knew
how to swim by grade eight. I did not. Joining the high school swim team taught
me the proper fundamentals of swimming so that I developed speed and long range
endurance. Joining the swim team also deprived my father of his favorite excuse
for not taking me duck hunting.
“Not until you learn how to swim,” he would
answer to my incessant nagging - until I joined the swim team and he finally gave
into my persistence and took me on a duck hunting trip. I remember that in
spite of my victory I did not enjoy getting up at four in the morning to
prepare for the hunting trip and that it was hard to shake off sleep at such an
early hour. It was still dark when we met up with Dad’s buddy and his Labrador retriever
hunting dog before setting off on a long drive that ended on the opposite shore
from a duck hunting blind on the Saint Lawrence River. To get to the blind we
had to traverse the Saint Lawrence Seaway and navigate across the deep shipping
lanes to reach the opposite shore where marsh reeds and swamps drew in flocks
of migrating ducks and geese. It was dark and the water was calm as
we prepared to set off in a fourteen foot row boat at five-thirty in the
morning. The plywood row boat we were using was an old piece of junk that had
been stored upside down on the shore of the river and left there open to theft
or vandalism. There were other boats like it but like ours none had oars and
none were worth stealing. After attaching an outboard motor to the transom of
our tired old row boat and cranking it up we set off on our adventure and motored
along at about six knots towards the center of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The river’s
current was swift but the wind remained quiet for the first hour. As we neared
the center of the river the wind picked up a little and the water became
somewhat rougher but nothing to worry about. The Labrador retriever hunting dog
laid calmly at my feet as his master steered the boat and my father bailed out water
that seeped through the seams and slopped over the shallow gunnels of the row
boat.
“Don’t lose the bailing can,”
my father shouted over the roar of the six horsepower outboard when it was my
turn to bail. “It’s the only thing that’s keeping this leaky old tub floating.”
When I think back on it now we
were ill prepared to be on the water that early morning. It was bitterly cold
and dark. We had no communication devices. No navigation lights. No compass. No
cell phones. No CB radio. No VHF. No flares. No Stormtech type floater suits. In
fact we had no emergency flotation equipment of any kind other than three floating
seat cushions that were so old and saturated with water that they probably would
have sunk like a stone. To add to this ill preparedness we were two adults and a
near grown boy and a large dog crossing a potentially dangerous body of water in
a row boat that had barely ten inches of freeboard after we all piled into it -
a rowboat driven by an outboard motor at least twenty years old. Add to this recklessness the hypocrisy of a
father and his buddy who could neither one of them swim a stroke and the
potential for disaster loomed large. Nevertheless we made the river crossing
without mishap and in due time our little row boat reached calmer waters where
we pulled in front of a hunting blind made of reeds and two by twos strapped
together. As we began setting out our decoys on the water we were thankful for
a beautiful morning sunset which set the sky on fire
Red sky at night sailor’s delight-red sky a’
morn sailor be warned.
It is a common expression on the west coast
where boating is a way of life but we were east coast land-lubbers and none of
us had heard that little ditty before as we retreated to our blind and waited
quietly for the ducks to arrive. It was late November and almost the end of
duck hunting season for that year. In a
few weeks time the winter storms would freeze the Saint Lawrence solid making
any form of boating impossible. As with most things that come to an end we were
all anxious to maximize our last hunting trip of the year and no one was
willing to give up and return home before it was time in spite of the bitter
cold. The duck blind gave us some
protection from the wind and kept us out of view of the flocks of incoming
ducks so that we could pop up and bushwhack the poor critters with number six
bird shot when they dropped in to join our decoys. But there were very few
ducks dropping in that morning. A couple of stragglers winged in close enough
for us to get off a few shots but none fell out of the sky. I think we might
have blasted maybe a dozen rounds all morning. Dad’s pal said the shortage of
ducks was because of the wind which seemed to be picking up. My dad responded
that maybe the ducks had already flown south for the winter. I said nothing as
I held tightly onto my 16 gauge shotgun that dad had given to me for my last birthday
and which I had never before used on a live target. The predawn temperature was
close to the freezing mark and the rising sun was not helping to warm me up one
bit. My hands were so cold inside my insulated gloves that I could barely feel
my fingers. I scanned the gray skies for incoming targets and looked forward to
an adrenalin flow that would warm me up when the shooting started. My dad made a cryptic remark about leaving
before the wind got too much worse but no one wanted to return from this last
hunting trip of the season too soon. And no one wanted to return skunked. Dad’s
friend continued to be optimistic that the weather would improve while his
hunting dog whined anxiously and our small boat continued rocking in the ever
increasing swells. As the sky brightened and then became darker I saw that there
was no land to fall back on as larger and larger waves began rolling in on us.
The hunting blind was located at the edge of the Saint Lawrence River bordering
an impenetrable swamp that stretched for several kilometers behind us to the
east. There was no way a man could walk through that swamp in neck deep water and
a boat could certainly not pass through due to all of the little islands of
grass and reeds. The only way out of there was to travel back across the mighty
Saint Lawrence River that was beginning to kick her heels up like a bucking
bronco in a rodeo. The wind howled as it swept down the river ahead of a bitter
cold front that was moving in from the coast. The wind brought rain. Just a sprinkling
at first but soon the ice cold droplets began to run down the inside our parkas
chilling us to the bone. The weather continued to worsen and by the time we
realized we had better leave it was too rough to even collect the decoys. We left
the decoys behind as we hastily started the outboard and beat a retreat from
the duck blind heading directly into what was to become a full force gale. Waves
of three feet and more began to intrude on the duck blind as we motored away and
those swells became even larger as we motored towards the center of the Saint
Lawrence Seaway. The rowboat began riding up one side and down the other side
of larger and larger waves. When the waves reached six feet in height it was
obvious that we were well outside of our margin of safety. At first this was
exciting to me and I was not afraid. But I began to understand the seriousness
of our situation when my dad called out to me in a shaky voice.
“Hold onto your life cushion,” he yelled as
our little row boat rode up and down ever increasing waves. “If anything
happens hold onto your cushion and stay with the boat.”
If anything happens? What could happen? That’s
when I noticed the fear in my Dad’s eyes. That’s when I became a little scared
myself. We only had a few miles to go to reach land on the opposite shore but it
looked almost unreachable as the darkening sky and the increasing waves
obscured the coastline. The waves rolled
higher and higher until they towered over our open boat. Under different
circumstances it might have been fun to slide down waves like a surfboard
leaving a froth of dirty water in our wake but fun was tempered with concern as
I noticed my father’s hands clutching on the gunnels of the boat. When I
finally understood the seriousness of our situation I began to worry about my
father more than myself. Dad could not swim and I worried about what might happen
to him if the boat capsized or swamped with water. At least I could swim if the
boat went down. But swim where – and swim for how long. A person would not last
twenty minutes in that hypothermic water.
At a certain point I noticed something gliding
past in the water to my left.
“Look,” I said as I pointed out the object to
my father. It was an inboard/outboard speedboat and the only other boat we were
to see that day. The speedboat was a twenty-four foot fiberglass cruiser with a
steering wheel, a canvas top, a windshield and Plexiglas side windows. The boat
had a modified V Hull that was designed for performance and was painted black. It
was a boat that I would have envied in different circumstances- but there it
was floating in the water - upside down.
“Shouldn’t we check and see
if anyone is in there,” I said as we slid down a wave and motored past the
overturned hull.
“There’s no one in there,”
answered my father in that same strange shaky voice that I had heard earlier.
“Get down off your seat and sit in the bottom of the boat.”
“But it’s wet down there.”
“Just do it.”
I did.
It would take another half hour of motoring
to reach calmer waters and we were extremely lucky that our row boat
did not swamp or sink on the way. We should not have been on the water. A small
craft warning had been issued earlier but having no marine band radios we did
not hear it. Looking back on the situation is perhaps even scarier than the
actual event as I contemplate now what I was too young to understand back then.
My father and I never spoke of this incident again. I suspect he was
embarrassed at his lack of good judgment on that duck hunting trip. I did not
grill him on the many mistakes that were made that day. I never asked him if he
was scared like I was but I can tell
you this. Neither Dad nor I ever went duck hunting again.
Stay tuned for the next chapter in my adventures on the water where my girlfriend and I had to be rescued from a hydroplane that went down
in the frigid waters of an almost deserted lake.
COMING IN MY NEXT BOOK TITLED “You Won’t get
Wet I Promise!
A collection of dangerous and even life altering experiences on the water
Jay Carter Brown
