re: What’s your best boat breakdown/got lost story?

About 25 years ago I was going duck hunting in the Salvador Wildlife Management Area. I didn’t have much sense and still attempted to make the hunt even though it was pitch black, with fog so thick you could hardly see 10 feet in front of the boat. I was idling across the bayou and noticed a sign along the bank. From there, I knew which direction I needed to go, so I headed off, hardly any faster than idle speed. About ten minutes later I saw the same sign. I did an entire circle, thinking I was driving straight that entire time.

Looking back, that was really stupid to drive blind like that. I could have collided with someone or something. Live and learn...

quote:

---

Had a camp in the middle of Lake Hermitage growing up. There was a small bayou behind the camp where we would run crab traps.

---

Smiths Bayou?

Those camps are still up, if you’re talking about the ones on the west side of the lake

quote:

---

Smiths Bayou?

---

Yes, though it was only a single camp back there. It was falling into disrepair when we stopped going around 2000, can’t imagine much if anything is left of it.

1) tied the duck boat up to a platform blind in atch bay. it broke loose in a northerner and left us stranded, cold, wet, alone. radios and everything else were in the boat, nobody at the camp knew where we were. one very miserable and near-hypothermic night later we go rescued by st mary sheriff's boat. six years later a crabber found the boat up in a tree after a tropical storm surge, still use it today

2) october 2005 we went out the rigolets to go look at what katrina did to chandeleur. no gas stations were open but i thought i had enough gas. sputtered out and adrift in MS sound on the way back, getting dark, nobody answering on 16. by the faintest of cell signals i reach seatow capt...he's in bed in morgan city. i remind him i paid for the service, he says yeah, drop anchor i'll be there when i get there. 8 hrs later he rides up with a can of gas, remarkably not too mad.

quote:

---

I’ve caught a bunch of reddish back there, and have found a few schools of trout by the pilings (how the frick do you spell that? Brainfart) where the camp used to be

---

Yea, we used to slaughter the reds and occasional bass back there. It used to be a long bayou that entered into a duck pond, then across that was another small canal. Lol you can thank me for those trout, we dumped a ton of oyster shells down there. Used to catch rat reds and sheepshead fishing off the dock.

We used to do really well in that canal with the pumping station in it.

Do you remember the old timer Kenny who used to run the launch?

Posting to save for later when I have a 30 minute dump to take so I can read all of these.

Back in the early 70's I took a job as a deckhand on a shrimp boat. The boat was an old boat that was originally used as sort of a crew/work boat in the very early oilfield days. We did some trawling but mostly ran butterfly nets at night in the ship channel at Cameron.

Well one full moon night we had an exceptionally strong outgoing tide. A little after midnight I was culling shrimp on the deck when I heard a loud noise and looked up to see the starboard net frame fold back against the hull. The force of the tide had ripped the guy lines loose that keep the frame perpendicular to the hull. If that wasn't bad enough, the force of the current against the port frame swung the bow hard left and put the starboard net into our prop. Immediately the net wrapped up in that big prop, killed the engine, and out into the gulf we go.

We floated around for a while trying to figure a way out of this predicament. The engine would run in neutral, but forward and reverse were a no go. All that net was knotted up on the prop and it was going nowhere. Calling the Coast Guard back in those days was not something you did unless you were sinking. So it soon became obvious that someone had to go over the side to try and cut the net out of the prop. Well the skipper of the boat was a Korean War vet and his shoulder had been ripped open by a land mine. The injury made swimming out of the question. The other deckhand was his 15 year old son. So that left me as the obvious choice and I volunteered to give it a shot.

To reach the prop you had to swim down about 3 to 4 feet, then another 4 to 5 feet under the hull to the prop. I was a strong swimmer and could hold my breath for a long time under normal conditions, but these were not normal conditions. Armed with a dull Old Hickory butcher knife, I was getting probably 30 to 45 seconds of working time with each breath. Hell, with no light it took me a half dozen trips under the hull just to figure out where to start cutting. That big diesel had that net wound up so tight it felt almost as solid as the prop shaft. Not to mention that, when I volunteered, I had not considered the fact that as I cut the net, I was going to be releasing a ton of chum into the water. So as soon as that started happening, I started having visions of a shark taking my foot off. It took me probably an hour in the water to whittle the net out of the prop one strand at a time. By the time I got it done I was completely spent. But we were motoring back to port and my night was done, I thought.

We actually docked this boat in a spot on the north end of Big Lake (Lake Calcasieu). We couldn't get the starboard frame raised since it was bent back against the hull, so we were sort of limping home. The skipper decided to go through the lake, instead of taking the ship channel. That way if we had other issues we wouldn't get plowed by a ship. So we're about mid lake and we loose rudder control. To reach the rudder you had to go below deck into the shrimp hold and then squeeze through a really small hole in a bulkhead to the rudder. When I got back there I see that the net incident had apparently sheared the pin in the rudder linkage. We didn't have anything to substitute for that pin, so the only way to steer the boat was to manually manipulate the rudder from inside that compartment. So from there to the dock, the skipper would holler left or right to the other deckhand, and then he would holler to me. Now back in that day, there was still a lot of well heads in the lake. So the threat of steering through them at night without ramming into one was on my mind almost as bad as the sharks had been. Not to mention it took some doing to squeeze through that access hole in the bulkhead. So needless to say, by the time we got back to the dock, I was ready to drag up on that job!

I took my Dad fishing for his birthday earlier this year. We went early to beat the weather we knew was coming. (30 mph winds) We fish for a while no luck and decide to check a few other spots. Leaving the spot furthest away from the launch, the motor blows. It took about 4 hours to idle back to the launch. Crossing a lake a idle speed in 30 mph winds was interesting. My Dad thought I was trying to kill him for his birthday.

There are also plenty of stories fishing with my grandfather where he got us stuck and I had to get out and push for what felt like hours.

quote:

---

You're lucky to be alive. . .

---

Playing lead boat in an open-canoe with some of the nations best kayakers can lead to dozens of boring tales to tell.

Here's a more traditional broken boat story. It's my fifteenth birthday and mom takes me to get my learners permit. Upon return Dad tosses me the key's and says let's go, your driving to Mobile (from B'ham) for some fishing. He had an old buddy ex-commercial fisherman, a Camile victim, lined up for the weekend.

. . . Oh boy - both Driving and Fishing . . . (with a pro !!!)

On arrival, as luck would have it, our plans were about to fizzle out due to some mechanical failure. So it's first boat down but fisherman dude (name withheld) hooks us up with another trip for day one. So we're out somewhere far from land, in the middle of Mobile Bay and boat number two breaks down. It might have been fixable; however the drunk in charge (the unknown friend) is mostly stumbling and fumbling around. Yep, it's going to be one of those days. Our luck temporarily changed with a quick tow until the boat we're in starts to un-rivet. The force of being towed had popped a bunch of rivets, separating the bow, and by now we were standing in water. After a bunch of hand waving it's decided to just pull it all back together with the tow rope, plane her out, and let it drain on the way back. Standard fare. So as my Dad heads back to pull the plug the old drunk decides to also head back and lend a hand. Bad move. The up-lifted motor, with my Dad plus the drunk, and all that now shifting water flips that tri-hull over end for end, into a full bow to stern cartwheel. From high-siding off the bow at 45 degree's I'm tossed air-high toward the two guys towing and it's a quick hand up. But my Dad the non-swimmer is no where to be seen, oh-shite, so the younger of the two tow'ers dives under the flipped boat to find him astride a seat cushion. Another tow in what was the biggest boat I'd ever been in, a 3 tier 50-60 footer, rounds out our day.

Thankfully it all turned out well, as the next day our friend (name still withheld) had his boat back to working and delivered with my very best day of fishing ever. What a difference in a day!

Does flipping a 13' Boston Whaler count in the Chef Pass? Was going duck hunting,3 of us, weather was bad. Water had bad back wash waves against the tide. Motor killed and before we knew it, we were in the water. We were in the water holding on till after day light and then some till a old man that just happen to walk out on his dock to drink coffee saw us in the pass.

How we lived thru that, only God knows. We lost everything including a dog. All of us were around 15-16 years old at the time.