It's been a couple of days since this boating story took place, but I've been real busy with the end of the fiscal year around the corner, and I really felt I needed to do this story justice. So, now I have some time, enjoy...
All six of us set out on Saturday to have a great day out on the water. We had boat (not mine), skis, a tube, a knee board, food, a grill beach chairs, two coolers, a beach tent, and various bags of towels, books, etc. As we began to load the boat on the Hampton River Club dock, one of the dock hands that put the boat into the water notified us that the steering was a little spotty. We got in and tested it, and it was a little loose, but nothing like it hadn't been before. We decided, to still go out (see where this story is going?).
We get to Pelican Spit, set up camp, do a superb job of anchoring the boat and begin to chill. A little soccer here, a little cooking here, a little sea turtle saving there. It was a blast. Come 2 p.m. we decide it was time to up it a notch and go skiing. We pack all of our gear up and pile it in a nice pile on top of the beach. We planned on coming back for it, this way we would have a lighter boat for all of our skiing purposes. We get out into the Village Creek and have a blast. We all tubed, we all fell off, we all experienced first-hand G forces. Close to 5 p.m. someone said they heard a snap, and whether they did or not, the steering stopped dead. You could turn the wheel all you wanted to, but the engine wasn't budging. We detected a leak in the hydraulic steering fluid line and it must have all leaked out, because we weren't going anywhere. Yes, we tried pushing the engine out of the 30 degree position it was in, thinking maybe we could manually steer it, but to no avail.
What to do. After making a couple phone calls to various possible rescuers, we decided to call Sea Tow. Sea Tow, for those that don't know, is basically an on-water tow truck service. They said they would be there in an hour. Don't worry, we had plenty of beer. So, we drank a couple of beers and then began to think about our stuff sitting on the beach as the tide came up. We hadn't anticipated being away from our gear this long. One of our friend's dad was out on another boat on the way to go somewhere and said he would swing by the Spit to get our gear. We get a call from him a short while later to hear that they couldn't get it. The waves were too rough and they couldn't get to shore. Great, there goes our stuff....
The Sea Tow boat arrived and we decided that Kelly and I would board on the Sea Tow boat and go out to the Spit to swim ashore and get our stuff. It would be dangerous. I was hoping to mainly get my dry box that had my wallet, cell phone, keys, and a few other things in it. As we approached I began to notice stuff floating everywhere. Sunscreen here, soccer ball over there, cooler way off in the distance. What I noticed more was the 6-7 foot waves swelling up all around the shore. It was more rough there than I have ever seen it. Then I saw my dry box, floating about 20 yards off shore. I jumped in the water to retrieve it and then swam to shore to attempt to rescue anything else. Nothing was there except the beach tent and one chair. I tried to pick them up and as I looked up I see Kelly and the boat captain waving their arms at me telling me to come back. I grabbed my dry box and swam back to the boat, only being able to see the boat while on the crest of the swells. I got aboard and Kelly was hysterical. I tried to soothe her and the captain informed me that while I was ashore, they took on several waves and at one point there was 3 feet of water in the cockpit. He said it was the worse he's ever seen it. We begin to motor away from the Spit when I saw my cooler floating by... I couldn't let that go. I straddled the side of the boat and stuck my hand out to grab it. My hand latched on and the cooler was so heavy it pulled me right back into the rough waters. Problem was, Kelly was in the corner crying and the Captain was intent on driving... no one saw me fall off. They traveled close to 200 yards before realizing that they were short one swab. Here I am, exhausted and floating on my cooler (unfortunately all the contents had been emptied too!) only seeing the massive waves in front of me. The boat comes back and I climb back aboard and pull my cooler on too, the wind picks up and blows the lid off my cooler and it floats away. After all that, the cooler is shot... what good's a cooler without a lid?
After I was back on board the second time, we rushed right back to the others, hooked up the two boats and were towed back to the dock (without running out of gas) and were all better. We were all fine, no injuries, just some missing material items, but hey, we got a GREAT story out of it. Here are some pics:
