The run up the lake was uneventful, we stopped once to refuel, the gas tank had no gauge so it would be more accurate to say; we ran out of fuel once and had to refill the tank.
We found the Tachie River mouth with no problem, the old cabin which had served as a trading post was in reasonably good repair although infested with mice and a couple of pack rats. That day we finished off by unloading the boat, packing in our supplies, cleaning the cabin and then took a run the fifteen kilometers up the lake to ensure we would find a starting point the next morning.
The next day we started our usual routine, up at six, cooked and ate breakfast and were on our way about seven. We returned that evening in the dark so decided to start a half hour earlier the next day. Back in those days when on a cruise you worked all the daylight hours you could squeeze in and you worked everyday without a break until the job was done.
The cruise itself was uneventful we finished it up in eight days but halfway through we knew we would be short on fuel so we flagged down a passing boat and sent word down to the ranger station that we would need more gas. On the last day we finished up in the early afternoon so hustled back and loaded up most of our stuff. Our gas still hadn’t arrived.
That night a wind came up blowing from the south east, straight up the lake and when we got up it was still blowing a gale we could see out into the big bay to the south of us, it was covered in huge white capped waves. So we hunkered down, fed the old wood stove and put in time. The wind died down a bit towards evening so we took the boat and went over to the reserve to see if we could buy any gas (between us we had about twenty dollars). We did get five gallons and figured with the couple gallons we had left we would be in good shape.
The wind continued on all day and through the night, when we woke up the next morning it was still with us. We spent the morning taking turns walking to where we could see down the lake. Finally about eleven am it looked like things had smoothed out; certainly the wind had lessened so we tossed in the rest of our supplies, topped up the fuel tank and headed out.
The moment we cleared the tip of the island we realized that things weren’t quite as smooth as we thought. The waves were about four feet high and the flat bottom boat would raise up on one wave and smash down on the next. Gerry was at the back with the motor, he slowed down and down trying to find some way of lessening the impact of each wave; we crept slowly on out into the bay and in spite of almost no headway being made the boat continued to pound violently. The bay we were crossing is about eight kilometers (five miles) across and after almost two hours we weren’t quite halfway. We were both getting worried about the fuel situation, because without headway we had no control and we didn’t dare to try refueling with out shutting down. About this time I looked down into the bottom of the boat and noticed that there was about three inches of water sloshing about. I yelled this back to Gerry and he yelled back that it was just spray.
It made sense but I kept looking down then noticed that each time we crashed down on a wave a thumb size spurt of water shot up. “It’s not spray,” I yelled “we’ve got a hole in the bottom!”
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