I was there on Saturday?one of the worst days on the water I have had in MANY years. A buddy and his 6 year old son headed out at about 8:30. We towed the boat (after staying up until 11:30 fixing the trailer wires our puppy chewed off) and arrived at about 10:45am to a white caped lake, the wind sock was full! After launching the boat we were ready to pull away from the dock when the throttle control locked up. I thought I had this problem cured earlier in the year. I fooled around with it for a few minutes and freed it up. We finally headed to the inlet, at the suggestion of the park ranger. On the way there we hit bottom?hard! After about 15 minutes of trying to get us loose the cables locked up again!! My buddies son was a bit scared (it was his first time on a boat) but they both handled it very well! Just as I decide to get wet and walk the boat loose, we freed up. We figured it was best to not scare the kid any more and headed to the ramp. The boat would only go about 10 miles an hour. I thought maybe some electrical had gotten wet when I was ?fixing? the cables and did not think too much more about it?until I looked in the bilge well. We probably took on 40 gallons of water. Handing the driving duties off to my buddy, I got out my portable bilge pump and started pumping away. Back at the dock I pulled the boat out and removed the plug?it drained for better than 10 minutes. To top it off, my prop is going to need some work now!
After leaving the boat in the parking lot we decided to fish the launch area, as there were some guys catching nice fish there as we were launching\loading the boat. After 3 hours of drowning worms and power bait (it was working for the other guys) and throwing spinners and Repalas, we loaded up and headed home.
It was a long, painful day!!!
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