It all started off innocently enough. It was a beautiful day and my buddy and I were going to check out my little jet-Boat in a local lake to see how it was running after the winter. Of course, I had run it at home before taking to the water and everything seemed fine.

We got all the necessary boating supplies, hooked the boat and trailer to the Jeep, and off we went to the lake. It was a large, shallow lake on the edge of town with a beautiful panorama of huge Cypress trees, water lilies and only a few homes along the several miles of shoreline. Other than a few fisherman on the weekends, it is mostly uninhabited except for numerous alligators, catfish and several varieties of water fowl.

A Good Start

After a reasonable launch at the one well-constructed boat ramp on the lake, the engine started with the second crank, and with smiles on our faces off we went for what turned out to be 20 minutes of fun and four hours of hell for a couple of country boys!

After a good stretch along the southern shoreline of the lake, we shot back past the launch point and ran the boat at the top speed of over 55 mph, and headed toward the northern end of the lake. About half-way back we stopped, and I turned the motor off so we could just talk and enjoy the wonderful peace and quiet of that beautiful place.

We found ourselves gently rocking on the tannic-acid-colored waters with bright green shores around us and the vivid blue sky with large white clouds above. It doesn’t get much better than that. Little did we know it was about to get a whole lot worse!

Things Take a Turn

After about 10 minutes I tried to restart the engine, and tried, and tried. It would turn over just fine, but would not start. We were about a half a mile from the nearest dense swampy shoreline, and easily over three quarters of a mile from the nearest place where we could actually see a dock, and that was directly into a stiff wind from our position.

We spent the next couple of hours using a small paddle, swimming and pushing the boat, and finally, when we could touch the muddy lake bottom, pulling the boat until we reached that dock.

Tying the boat securely, we walked toward the land. Suddenly, right next to the dock on a slightly lower platform we saw a large alligator sunning itself. We knew there were dangers in these waters, but knowing and seeing one of these large powerful predators are two vastly different things. We just looked at each other and knew our bag of luck was not empty yet.

Apparently, we had found the local area rowing club. It was a large park and storage facility for a few power boats and numerous sculling boats.

The place was totally deserted, but at least it bordered the road and the two-mile walk back to where the Jeep and boat trailer were. Nothing was going to be easy it seemed, however, because the whole place was surrounded, other than along the lakefront, by a seven-foot-high barbed wire fence and a locked and chained gate.

We decided to climb the gate. I went first, and that was going quite well as I was going over the top when suddenly I got my shorts caught in the wire, in the one place I didn’t want to be impaled, if you know what I mean.

“Push up with your arms as hard as you can!” my buddy yelled as he climbed up his side of the fence, and with the strength of Hercules, he freed my shorts from their predicament, and I tumbled over the fence to the safe side. Fortunately, he surmounted that nasty obstacle much better than I did.

No Boat Left Behind

On the way back to the Jeep we happened to talk to someone who told us there was an old abandoned boat ramp in a construction area about a quarter mile from where the boat was tied up at the rowing club dock. After hearing our story, he said, smiling, “It’s easier to be forgiven than to get permission,” and added, “The gate is unlocked.”

Looking at each other, feeling like the best way to get through hell was to keep on going, we figured, why not, and we drove back along the road and checked out that old ramp. The construction area was a mess, rebar sticking up from broken slabs of concrete, very uneven ground and other obstacles, but we were country boys, and we had four-wheel drive. What we didn’t have yet was the boat.

My buddy took care of that. He swam and waded along the shore back to where the boat was tied up and pulled it back, while I had the easier job of getting the Jeep and boat trailer through all the obstacles and in position to load the boat back onto the trailer once he returned.

After we got the boat back on the trailer and were able to pull it up that broken down ramp, we took a few minutes to wash all the mud and slime off of ourselves. Then we packed up and headed home, feeling pretty good that we were able to handle all the unexpected physical challenges that we had faced.

Talking about it on the way home he said, “If we never were able to go today, I would have been really disappointed, but this way I had a great adventure, and with all the sun and water, I don’t need to lay out by the pool this afternoon like I had planned!”