Day 4 – Bass Lake

When planning our trip and deciding what to do at the lake and when, we made sure that when renting a boat for half of a day, we did it in the afternoon instead of the morning so that we would have time to recover from the previous days events. Since the previous day was so long, that turned out to be a good choice.

We had a lazy morning puttering about the cabin; Dylan and I ran to the store to pick up what we needed for the afternoon. After lunch we headed to the lake. When planning for the lake, we knew the boat would have a BBQ and we decided that cooking dinner on the boat would be fun. of course hamburgers and hot dogs would be easiest, but I had already purchased one too many dinners, and so we decided to cook steak. That meant in addition to the plates and utensils, we needed to pack steak knives as well… only one more thing so it didn’t seem too much of an issue.

We went through the boat rental and rules process, and then were lead to the dock to get to our boat, except there was no boat. Apparently whoever had rented the boat before us had not returned yet. The dock boy checked and there were no other boats, so we had to wait, but they gave us an extra hour, so now the boat wasn’t due back until 8pm. Eventually our boat arrived, we loaded up, and headed out.

It took me a little getting used to the boat (it was a pontoon, and I have only driven a boat one before) and the lake was actually quite busy, which was a little nerve wracking. The steering felt off, but without experience, I just assumed that was how pontoons steered. But after getting a feel for it, we loaded the boys onto the tube and started dragging them around. They were enjoying themselves:

We were having a hard time communicating, with the boys, so we decided to stop for a bit and make sure they understood the hand-signals of tubin’. Dylan was ready to take a break, and so he came back on the boat. Aidan didn’t want to stop so we dragged him some more. Dylan was enjoying being on the boat… he was standing at the front, right behind the door, with his arms out and the wind at his face… and that is when the day took a turn.

Going full speed while pulling Aidan, we crossed the path of two speedboat wakes that converged right in front of us at the same time, this sent the front of the pontoon up, and then DOWN… nose first in to the water. Ido not know what the angel that we hit the water was, all I saw was the front door bust open wedging Dylan’s foot underneath it, and a wall of water come rolling into the boat. For a moment I thought, “Oh shit, the boat is gonna sink.” I pulled back on the throttle, the boat righted itself and all of our stuff that wasn’t secured, was rolling around in a pool of water on the boat. Then the water began to roll off the sides, back into the lake. Dylan was screaming, Aidan was yelling from the tube “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” Karen had the flag up and was running to tend to Dylan, and I looked for a calm place for us to cut the engine.

I got Aidan on the boat, Karen got Dylan onto the bench, looked at his foot and put ice on it. We were concerned it may have broken. I was in shock, the kind you go into after being in a car crash. Aidan was concerned that our lake day was over. I wanted to take the boat back to have the door latch fixed and tell them what happened. During the pre-launch check, I had pointed out a large dent on the front panel just to the left of the door. The large dent seemed massive now. I’m not sure if it was in fact any larger at all, or if it was just the result of the state of shock I was in.

We puttered back to the rental place, and just before we arrived, randomly, again the front dipped, albeit much less severely, and water rolled on to the deck. At this point there was nothing that I could see that would have caused this so I determined that our use of this particular boat was cursed…. well not really I was convinced that this boat was going to be trouble for us. I was glad we were taking it back in to get the door fixed and have them check it out. The dock boys (and they were boys… 14-17 years old I’d guess) were very compassionate. When I explained what happened and how I thought for a moment that the boat was going to sink, I was assured that the pontoons are filled with styrofoam and that the boats are virtually impossible to sink. As I explained what happened, I could see the bewilderment on their face, and at this point I realized we were just incredibly lucky yo have a very rare random and freaky even happen to us.

One of the boys said the the front door would be fine held together with the Target bag Karen had tied to it, but I asked them to fix it anyway… we wanted to get off the boat for a little bit and they said it would take 15 – 20 minutes to repair.

It was about an hour before we were back on the lake, in different boat. I’m not sure if the door frame was tweaked needing to be fixed before replacing the door latch, but our cursed boat was moved to a dock where there was power, and a guy was using a drill and banging away on that big dent I mentioned. He worked on it a long time before they realized that boat was not gonna be ready again anytime soon. So they gave us a different boat, one that was two sizes bigger cause that was all that they had.

As we pulled away from the dock on our new boat (Dylan had been running around and jumping while we waited so all concern about his foot was gone), I immediately noticed a difference between the two boats. Bot the steering and the controls were much smoother. I immediately felt more comfortable, and in during the time we were on land, the lake traffic had cleared up quite bit.

We made our way all the way to the far end of the lake and Aidan went tubin’ again… Dylan was done tubing. We dragged him the whole length of the lake, and then half-way back again before pulling him and looking for a nice little spot to anchor and cook dinner.

as I grilled the steak, the boys had fun jumping off of and swimming around the boat, and at one point swimming to a nearby beach. After they came back Dylan took off his vest and decided to jump off the front of the boat and swim to the side ladder. Both Karen and I were distracted by meal prep and didn’t notice where he was until we heard him say, “help.” He had swam halfway to the beach and was too tired to swim anymore. Karen grabbed his life vest and jumped in to swim it to him while giving him directions to float on his back. Apparently he goes under on his back so that wasn’t working too well for him. Karen finally reached him and got his vest on him and then realized she was so spent, she couldn’t swim anymore. Thankfully there was rock under the water right below her and only big enough for to stand on with both feet together. As she pondered the matter, a person who was on the beach swam to her with a pool noodle and then swam with her back to the boat where I was completely oblivious to the seriousness of the matter Karen had just experienced. But alls well that ends well and by the time everyone was back on the boat, everyone had worked up an appetite.

Apparently Karen thought I would get the steak knives and I thought she would, so those did not make it on the boat… and the same was true for plates. No worries, after the steak was cooked, I cut it on the grill into slices and we all stood around the grill eating our steak.

After dinner we puttered around the lake a little bit. I realized how much less stressful it was for me if I wan’t going full speed constantly looking out for things not to run into and being aware of things were that may run into my tuber. Aidan wasn’t done tubin’ though so we went to the far end of the lake again, got him loaded up, and he tubed all the back to the dock which was a nice ending to the day.