I was so tired after my little "swim", it was all I could do just to raise my head. But, I had to take a moment to assess where I was and what my next move was going to be. That was when I saw something else that was quite disturbing. There in front of me was most of the contents of the boat, or at least the stuff that could float, moving with the current down the lake and toward an underpass type structure. I could see my tackle box, which contained every piece of fishing accessory I could imagine. There were four fishing rods and reels, one of the seats to the boat, and my blue lunch box that has seen me through thick and thin over the past umpteen years.
I quickly took the boat rope that was secured to the stern and wrapped it around a rock and dove back into the water. I reached the fishing poles first, well at least three of them, I never could find the fourth. I held them in my left hand and started for the my tackle box, which looked to be about 20 feet away. When I finally reached the box and tried pulling it up out of the water, I was immediately reminded that the top of the box had been open when the boat went down. As a result, I saved the tackle box...but there was nothing left inside except a small round container with a few swivels in it and a couple of packages of hooks; No sinkers, no lures, no floats, no knives or pliers, so forth and so on.
I eventually made it back to the rocks and threw the salvaged items on the bank. My blue lunch box, which contained a brand new, unopened box of worms, was quickly fading off under the bridge. Everything else was gone.
I dragged myself back to the rocks and plopped my backside down on the edge. I had to rest for just a minute or two.
Finally, someone to help, I thought, as I heard an approaching boat. I wasn't sure what they could do, but at least I will have some company and another brain or two to figure this all out. Not to be! Two fishermen putted right by me about 50 yards of shore. When I realized they were not going to stop, I stood and hollered at them and waved. Nothing. I figured with their boat motor running they probably didn't hear my cries and because I was nestled back up underneath a lot of trees and over hang, they didn't see me wave, either. OK, I thought, back to my own devices.
I decided I had rested long enough, that this dilemma was not going to correct itself by staring at it. It was easy to surmise that I was not going to be successful at any level until I got the water out of the boat and it became floatable again. And, I knew that the only way I could do that was to tip the boat up on one side far enough that the water would escape over its edge. Sounds easy enough, I thought.
I found a pretty sturdy looking tree with a trunk about 4 inches thick just five or six feet up the slope of the shore. I started my climb and after sliding down the edge a dozen or so times, I finally was able to wrap my arm around the trunk to keep from slipping back down to the bottom. I wrapped the rope around the base of the tree and started pulling with every ounce of strength I could muster. The boat inched over to the side, but not even slightly did it move UP the side as I had hoped, thinking I could pull the front of the boat up on it's side and then move towards the back and tip that end of the boat so the water would pour out. I decided that even a 12' aluminum boat is extremely heavy when it's full of water.
I left the front of the boat moored to the tree trunk and moved back down to the water to reassess. That's when I realized that if I was ever going to get the boat tipped to it's side, I was going to have to remove the two motors (the little trolling motor and the 6 HP Mercury) and get them off the boat. But, how on earth was I going to do that?
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