Boat fail confessions!

Old Sarge · 04-05-2016, 08:28 AM

Nobody’s perfect and sometimes you have to learn the hard way! I was reading a post the other day about people getting out of their boat to go swimming without anchoring or leaving someone in the boat and having to try to catch up to their boat when it gets blown away from them in a gust of wind! We have all heard about people forgetting to put the plug in or setting their parking brake when launching their boats. I thought it might be interesting to hear a few other boat fail confessions! So I will go first!

Back in the 90’s I was living in Plymouth, New Hampshire and thought it would be nice to spend a day on Squam Lake. “On Gold Pond” was really popular then and I thought it would be cool to see some of the sights from the movie!

Even though I was a complete novice, I was able to rent a 20’ pontoon boat equipped with a new Honda four stroke outboard. There was no boater education requirement back then and all you needed was a driver’s license. The man at the counter who rented me the boat handed me a paper map and told me to go south and west from the red markers and north and east from the black markers and off I went with the wife, our two children and my mother and our dog!

We got off to a slow start as the engine kept dying until I realized you had to open the air release valve on the gas tank! Then we were off and traveled through the channel from “Little Squam” out on to “Big Squam”.

We had a great day and made it around the whole lake and I was pretty pleased myself and started heading for the channel back to “Little Squam”. I could see the channel entrance and thought we were home free and had the engine wide open. All of a sudden I realized we were approaching a marker and before I could decide east or west, north or south, we past it! We did not get three feet past that marker before we felt the stern rise up as we hit a ledge and the lower unit dragged over it!

There we were dead in the water. Luckily I had a cell phone and even though we had one reception bar, it was enough to get us in contact with the place we rented the boat from. The guy asked where we were and I mentioned we had been coming in and could see the channel and the guy said “Oh, I know where you’re at!” so I am sure we were not the first people to hit that ledge!

We waited a half an hour and here he comes in a little skiff with a small outboard with a tiller arm! He hooked up to us and towed us through the channel. If anyone has been on Squam you know there is a lot of traffic in that channel and every time we passed a boat people were smiling, obviously knowing what had happened. It was like doing the walk of shame!

It didn’t get any better once we got back to the counter and the man said “That will be twelve hundred dollars, sir. Shall I put it on your Visa or American Express?”! It doesn’t seem like much now but back then twelve hundred bucks was quite a lot of money, especially to me!

The story does end well though! No one got hurt (except for my pride) and my homeowners insurance paid to repair the engine!

So who's next!

04-05-2016, 08:28 AM	#1
Old Sarge Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2015 Location: Rochester, NH Posts: 150 Thanks: 106 Thanked 63 Times in 29 Posts	Boat fail confessions! Nobody’s perfect and sometimes you have to learn the hard way! I was reading a post the other day about people getting out of their boat to go swimming without anchoring or leaving someone in the boat and having to try to catch up to their boat when it gets blown away from them in a gust of wind! We have all heard about people forgetting to put the plug in or setting their parking brake when launching their boats. I thought it might be interesting to hear a few other boat fail confessions! So I will go first! Back in the 90’s I was living in Plymouth, New Hampshire and thought it would be nice to spend a day on Squam Lake. “On Gold Pond” was really popular then and I thought it would be cool to see some of the sights from the movie! Even though I was a complete novice, I was able to rent a 20’ pontoon boat equipped with a new Honda four stroke outboard. There was no boater education requirement back then and all you needed was a driver’s license. The man at the counter who rented me the boat handed me a paper map and told me to go south and west from the red markers and north and east from the black markers and off I went with the wife, our two children and my mother and our dog! We got off to a slow start as the engine kept dying until I realized you had to open the air release valve on the gas tank! Then we were off and traveled through the channel from “Little Squam” out on to “Big Squam”. We had a great day and made it around the whole lake and I was pretty pleased myself and started heading for the channel back to “Little Squam”. I could see the channel entrance and thought we were home free and had the engine wide open. All of a sudden I realized we were approaching a marker and before I could decide east or west, north or south, we past it! We did not get three feet past that marker before we felt the stern rise up as we hit a ledge and the lower unit dragged over it! There we were dead in the water. Luckily I had a cell phone and even though we had one reception bar, it was enough to get us in contact with the place we rented the boat from. The guy asked where we were and I mentioned we had been coming in and could see the channel and the guy said “Oh, I know where you’re at!” so I am sure we were not the first people to hit that ledge! We waited a half an hour and here he comes in a little skiff with a small outboard with a tiller arm! He hooked up to us and towed us through the channel. If anyone has been on Squam you know there is a lot of traffic in that channel and every time we passed a boat people were smiling, obviously knowing what had happened. It was like doing the walk of shame! It didn’t get any better once we got back to the counter and the man said “That will be twelve hundred dollars, sir. Shall I put it on your Visa or American Express?”! It doesn’t seem like much now but back then twelve hundred bucks was quite a lot of money, especially to me! The story does end well though! No one got hurt (except for my pride) and my homeowners insurance paid to repair the engine! So who's next! Last edited by Old Sarge; 04-05-2016 at 09:14 AM.