That's a bumpy boat ride

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein) 08/22/2018 at 10:46 • Filed to: None

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The weekend before last, my wife and I went out to my parents’ vacation house near St. Michael’s, MD. We took the boat to a restaurant on the water, and in the middle of dinner, everyone’s phone went off with a FLASH FLOOD WARNING emergency alert.

We finished up our meal and went about getting back on the boat. My parents bickered about which way they were going to untie it and push back from the slip. It didn’t really matter, it’s not a big boat, but they were all shouting at each other in front of all the other people on this dock restaurant, and my wife was like OMG EVERYONE IS STARING AT US.

We had about a half hour boat ride home, and while a boat is obviously going to FLOAT in a flood, we didn’t want to get soaked with rain, and also didn’t want to encounter any of the lightning we had seen in the distance.

This boat is nice, but isn’t super fast or powerful. It’s a 2008 Grady White Tournament 205 with a Yamaha 150 hp 4-banger outboard motor. My dad punched it up to 27-28 knots which is about 4400-4500 rpm. It was a bit loud, and a bit bumpy, but we were all fine with that if it meant not getting rained on.

We did in fact make it home before the rain. My wife and mom went in the house while my dad and I put the boat up on the lift and snapped the tonneau on it. Then my dad was all like, “hey come with me to the shed and check out which beach chairs you want to take with you to the beach tomorrow,” and I had to gently remind him there was a bunch of lightning and it was about to start pouring rain. Which it promptly did, about 2 minutes after we went in the house.

Anyway, I just randomly decided to take some pics of the experience and it was kinda purty.

TheRealBicycleBuck > Textured Soy Protein 08/22/2018 at 10:52

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There’s a good reason you are supposed to get off the water when a thunderstorm comes along.

From:

Textured Soy Protein > TheRealBicycleBuck 08/22/2018 at 10:58

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“ we didn’t want to get soaked with rain, and also didn’t want to encounter any of the lightning we had seen in the distance."

TheRealBicycleBuck > Textured Soy Protein 08/22/2018 at 11:02

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Ummm, yeah. I was confirming, not criticizing. I thought you might like to share it with your dad.

functionoverfashion > Textured Soy Protein 08/22/2018 at 11:04

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When my son was just over a year old, I took him out in the boat with my parents to a little beach on our lake. The beach faces southwest, and a storm approached the lake from the northwest, which we didn’t really see because of the nearby tall trees, until it was coming in fairly hot.

We didn’t mess around, got him in the boat and started cruising home - this is in a 21' direct drive inboard ski boat - and almost instantly the wind shifted a bit and picked up . S torms often hit one part of the lake but not another, so I was running the boat at like, 2/3, thinking we might just skirt it by going due west toward home . Then I saw a lightning bolt. I rarely run my boat flat out, but I buried the throttle for about 4,7 00 RPM with a 310hp Ford 351 V8. For all that, it still only makes about 42mph because it’s an inboard - but it makes a hell of a lot of noise! We passed by a friend who works on an island and he was on the south side where the docks are ; never saw the clouds coming until it started to get dark. I gave him a wave as we screamed by and he was scrambling into his boat, untying it and hoping to get out of the storm in time.

We made it home JUST as it started to rain, my parents took my son up to the house and I covered the boat as fast as I could. It was POURING by the time I was done. My friend who was trying to escape the island came by our house about 15 minutes later, saying he came around a point of land and just hit a wall of water and 3' waves. That would have been really, really bad for my low-freeboard ski boat, but we made it before that happened . My friend was OK, but very wet.

I didn’t tell my wife just how close it was.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > functionoverfashion 08/22/2018 at 11:38

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I got caught in a rain storm yesterday, no lightning/thunder though thankfully. We knew it was supposed to rain but there was a 2-3 hour window after work so we went out and skied and enjoyed the water. About 6:30 I notice it’s getting darker and figure one more lap around the lake(it was a small lake) and we’ll go in. I was skiing, as soon as I got up it started drizzling, no big deal. We are going about 32mph too since I was slalom skiing. About halfway around the lake it just starts pouring...those big drops to the face at 32mph was not fun. I let go quickly lol. It poured the whole way back to the launch, thankfully it wasn’t a big lake that we were on.

functionoverfashion > MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s 08/22/2018 at 11:44

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Yikes, yeah we often push our luck. Sometimes you get lucky...

We could be far from home on our lake, but usually don’t go all 7 miles to the far end. The catch is, my wife’s family lives on a smaller connected lake, so getting back there is harder because you have to idle through a 1/2 mile river between the two lakes.

If we get caught out badly, we’ll just pull up to any number of places where we know someone, or really just anywhere if it’s bad enough. That’s pretty rare, especially with my kids being small - we’re a lot more cautious than we used to be (ahem, except see above haha).

I find the best time to ski/ride is the moment the rain passes. It’s often calm, and everyone who was scared in by the rain has either decided they’re done, or they wait an hour or two before heading back out. Even on a busy weekend day, you can have a flat lake to yourself if you time it right.

Pickup_man > Textured Soy Protein 08/22/2018 at 11:51

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I go fishing up in Canada every year and the “bay” that we fish in is roughly 8-9 miles wide, and 14 miles long. You really have to pay attention to the wind because the water can get nasty quick. Dad has a 20' Crestliner fishing boat similar to this,

It sits pretty high out of the water (for reference the front of the bow is about 5 - 5.5 ' high when trailered) .It h andles big waves pretty well, but we’ve had a few nerve racking days. We’ve only had one occasion where a wave broke over the bow, and that was a scary day. To top it off the impeller was starting to go bad and slow driving would overheat the engine very quickly so we had to tuck behind an island and hope the wind calmed down.

Worst story I have though, Dad was fishing on the Missouri River when the wind came up. Due to the currents and wind the Missouri , like any big river I imagine, can get really nasty, really quick. He was out in a 16' console boat, and by the time he made it just the few miles back to the trailer 3 out of the 4 engine mounts were broken.

MasterMario - Keeper of the V8s > functionoverfashion 08/22/2018 at 11:52

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It was nice while it wasn’t raining we were the only boat on the lake with the threat of rain coming