By Susan Govern
Whenever May rolls around, our local weather persons begin giving reports on Lake Erie conditions. They talk about the start of the boating and fishing season, and a lot of memories come floating back to me.
When Tim and I were first dating, he owned a boat. It was a six passenger inboard motor boat that was great for water skiing and for his other favorite pass-time, fishing.
Now as I previously wrote about in another essay – I am not athletically blessed and that means water skiing was never a skill I mastered in all the years we had that boat. Also, I will eat fresh caught fish cooked up just right, but to do the fishing and catching – not my “cup of tea”. Instead whenever we went out for a “boating picnic” I became the spotter while someone else skied or I enjoyed a nice nap in the sun while Tim fished. I also spent time “people watching”.
People Watching – now there’s a “sport” I am good at. Observing our fellow boaters was often highly entertaining.
I learned quickly from Tim how to handle our boat. He spent time teaching me the “rules” so I knew and understood what a “No Wake Zone” was (I can tell you it has nothing to do with being an area where you can throw out the anchor and take a snooze), how to watch his depth-finder to be sure we weren’t going to run into too shallow of an area, how to watch ahead for a skier who was down in the water…all of those things that are meant to keep us safe along with other boaters, especially if we were on a in-land lake like West Branch or Berlin which was considerably smaller than being on wide open Lake Erie. By people watching I soon discovered that many “weekend boaters” were out on the water and didn’t have a clue. Sometimes this was a scary prospect, but more often than not – just plain funny.
We observed on a few occasions people “jumping” the wake from another boat with theirs at high speed. Now when you’ve got a boat full of people, and there’s no such thing as seat-belts in a motor boat, you hit those waves and everyone on your boat suddenly looks like they’re in a game of “Whack-A-Mole”. Up they pop from their seats – with some who are lighter than others rising just a bit higher before they all plop down again. The surprised looks on their faces at going momentarily air born – priceless.
Then there’s the first time skiers; I often felt their pain because of my own past efforts to learn to water ski but I also found myself laughing hysterically too. Most of the time, the way to get your skis on is to jump in the water, swim out with the towing rope, then someone “floats” one ski at a time to you as you bob up and down semi-reclined and put each ski on each foot. You straighten yourself so the towing rope is between the skis, give a signal to the driver and as the boat picks up speed, you get pulled up onto your feet.
Sounds essentially easy – but like me before them – new skiers often end up feeling like their arms are being yanked from their bodies and end up “plowing” water face first. Or, they may find themselves skimming along the water for a few feet on their back because their legs have come out from under them. Either way – it’s funny to see – even it it’s not funny when you’re the one in the water.
At the end of the day, when it’s time to bring the boat in and get it back on your trailer, you need to wait your turn to get to the dock at the boat ramp. While idling and waiting, I also enjoyed watching.
Tim and his dad had long ago developed a routine that worked like clock-work to get the boat in and out of the water at the boat ramp.
With Tim in the boat, his dad would back the trailer down the ramp, Tim would start it up when it was far enough into the water, then back the boat gently off the trailer. When he was clear, his dad would drive away and park the truck then meet Tim at the dock, and away they would go.
Since I wasn’t too sure about backing the truck with the trailer and boat down the ramp, we worked out our own system. Tim would let me stand on the dock, he’d back the trailer down into the water almost to where it needed to be for him to back off the boat, he’d get out of the truck and I’d jump in. As soon as he was on the boat, he’d give me a signal to back up just a little more. Once the boat was clear, I’d pull the trailer out. At the end of the day, we simply reversed the process. We had it all so well timed that we could be launched or have the boat out and back on the trailer it just minutes.
This often wasn’t the case for other boaters. Many times, watching people at the boat ramp struggle with backing their trailers into the water was a cringe-worthy experience.
I can only guess at some of the “conversations” on the way home between more than one husband and wife after their experiences at the boat ramp. Then again, perhaps many of them weren’t even on speaking terms by the time they started their drive home.
I don’t want anyone reading this to think our boating experiences were always perfect. Far from it!
At West Branch, there is a fish at the bottom of that lake that is now the proud owner of Tim’s wallet and perhaps that same fish is also swimming around wearing my brother-in-law’s glasses.
Twice I have been out on one of our in-land lakes in pouring rain – and at least one of those times the lightning flashing all around us as we headed back to the Marina had me praying to our Guardian Angels harder than I had ever prayed before.
The best memory of time spent out on a boat had nothing to do with skiing or fishing or people watching. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon one August when Tim proposed to me while we were out on his boat.
It certainly ended up being a memorable day in a place I will never forget. We weren’t at West Branch, or Berlin Lake. We weren’t out on Lake Erie looking back at a picturesque shoreline watching a romantic sunset – nope, we were at good old Mosquito Lake.
Somehow – that seems pretty appropriate considering our boating experiences.
