Gerry yelled back, “We’ve got to get to shore, but turning is going to be tricky.”
We puttered along for a few more minutes then when there appeared to be a reasonable distance between waves, he swung the engine to make as tight a turn as possible. Ordinarily it would have been a quick turn but the boat was getting sluggish and we only got about three quarters of the way around before the next wave hit. All the water at that moment probably became our friend as the weight kept us from flipping as the wave hit.
However seconds later that changed again. The wind was now almost dead behind us and the next wave lifted the stern forcing all the water to rush to the bow. The outboard screamed as the propeller cleared the surface! We plunged into the wave that had just rolled by and it somehow forced the bow up sending some of the water back. I jumped up and started chucking anything I could lay my hands on back to the stern. Gerry turned the tiller so we angled slightly and in a few moments were able to stabilize some of the sloshing. I tore into one of our boxes, found an aluminum pot and started bailing as hard as I could.
It was almost as far to shore as we had been out into the bay but we took a chance and opened the throttle a bit and were at the beach in about a half hour. Each minute of that half hour we were reminded of the hole by the spurts that continued to come, I never stopped bailing.
The beach was mixed sand and gravel so Gerry ran us in a little fast and was able to get almost a third of the boat out of the water.
We were both cold and wet and probably in some sort of shock, but we had made it and now we had to fix things.
We lit a fire then emptied the boat of everything, took the motor off the transom and bailed some more water. We took time to warm up occasionally then gathered small logs and longer poles for pries. We pried the bow up, put a couple of log rollers underneath then some how we pulled, pried and got about half the boat onto the beach.
Next we pried off a couple of the floor boards on the side where the leak was and found that one of the bottom planks had been sprung. A rectangular opening about two inches long had been created tapering from the front to the back.
I pulled my shirt out of my pants and cut off a piece of shirt tail then we crammed it into the crack using a wooden wedge. We agreed that it should work, but neither of us said anything about the plank possibly springing further.
We boiled up some lake water and made a pot of tea in the bailer and sat around the fire sipping from the pot. Neither of us was too anxious to get going. Finally we just looked at each other and started the job of getting the boat back in the lake. Perhaps an hour later we were all loaded, motor refueled and were on our way.
I was now at the tiller and the wind had appeared to drop a bit but I noticed that the point that marked the far side of the bay was offering some relief from the wind also. I shouted, “I’m going to follow the shore around, when we get to the far side there should be no wind at all.” It was also in my mind that if the boat started to founder again, we would be close to shore.
That worked, we followed the curve, at first slowly then speeding up as the shirt plug was doing its job. By the time we reached the point it was five o’clock in the afternoon and amazingly the wind had dropped to a breeze. There were still waves but nothing like we had experienced earlier. We rounded the point and headed on down the lake.
We pulled into the Ranger station about seven thirty and as we were tying up one of the Assistant Rangers came down to the dock. He said, “Did you see Ken?” We replied of course in the negative. “Well he’s been looking for you all day, he ran gas up this morning and the Indians told him you had left before lunch, he’s been searching all day.”
We hung around the office when just after dark the Tachie 111, pulled into the dock, we both went down to help tie up.
Ken climbed out of the wheelhouse, looked our way once then brushed by without saying a word.
We went into the office the next morning and apologized although neither of us were sure if an apology was in order. But he had spent the day on the water, in a terrible storm, looking for us while I am sure visions of the other incident flashed through his head. Can’t say as I blame him for being upset.
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