Quote:
Originally Posted by Jfranovich
Whats everyone's scariest moment they had/seen on the water ? Mine was this past weekend when coast guard was pulling a 24' champion on plane... that guy looked white as the side of his boat.
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Mine was my first outing ever in my boat on Sabine this past March. The lake was rough as hell - had intermittent 4 footers with probably 30mph wind. I was fishing the middle of the lake near a platform when I noticed 3 guys on the platform and eyed their old bass boat getting beat to death on the pilings below - boat was not tied down and was taking water over the bow and stern.
Long story short, but the guys tried to get back into their boat (no ladder as it was a non-operative storm damaged platform) and fell overboard. I saw 2 of the men get back on the platform and the 3rd was hanging on to the motor. I was a few hundred yards away and started to pull anchor just in case, while watching as his boat drifted off with the tide. At one point all hell broke loose and everyone was hollering for help. It took several minutes to get to the guy on the boat and at that point it seemed as if he was close to just giving up and letting go. Man was well over 300 lbs and it took us a good 3 minutes to try to pull him into his boat. No life-jackets, radio, etc...I really thought he was going to drown...
Once the man was secure we had to get the other 2 off the platform and realized that one of the men was probably close to 70 - he had fallen in the water, swallowed something and could barely talk, much less breathe. I had called the Coast Guard during this whole process and informed them of such, but the 3 guys wanted no part of that and got in their boat and took off.
I had no business in the lake myself that day, but desparately wanted to get my boat in the water. These guys had absolutely no business at all out there in a 20 year old bass boat with absolutely zero safety equipment.
Was probably the best possible way for me to be baptized into boat ownership as I learned some invaluable lessons that day. And my first catch ever in my new ride was a 300lber...