26 | BOATINGMAG.COM | JUNE 2018I LEARNED ABOUT BOATING FROM THIS ...DANGEROUS
WATERS AHEAD
This boater lacked so many things.WANTED: YOUR STORIES Share your boating mistakes and mishaps so that your
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$100 West Marine gift card.W
hen I was a teenager many (many) years ago, I had a 15-foot
Starcraft SS15 powered by a 60 Evinrude. I loved that boat
and had many great adventures in it. One day, some buddies
and I were exploring the upper Niagara River and Chippawa
Creek. Chippawa Creek is on the Canadian side and meets the river about
2 miles above Horseshoe Falls. After exploring the creek and re-entering the
river, we stopped to relieve ourselves. I turned off the engine, and we took
care of our business. By the time we had fin-
ished, we had drifted past the warning sign
on the bank of the river. The sign, in a typical
Canadian manner of understatement, read
“Navigation Prohibited. Dangerous Waters
Ahead.” By dangerous waters, of course, it
meant that we were about a mile and a half
from the top of the falls.
Anyway, upon trying to restart the engine,
I was greeted with total silence. Nothing, not even a click.
The first thing we did was toss out the anchor. Having only the 20 feet of
line I used to anchor at the beach, the anchor hung straight down and we con-
tinued to drift. The next thing I did was reach for my tool box. Oops, no tools.
I was too lazy to carry them out to the boat that day. I had a paddle, but the
current was too strong to make any headway toward shore.
To say we were getting nervous would also be an understatement. Also, this
was pre-cellphones, and I didn’t have a VHF radio.
Finally, the only thing I could think of was that since I was getting nothingat all from the engine, it could be a
battery problem. I pulled the anchor
back up and tapped the terminal
connections with it. To our great
relief, the Evinrude fired up and off
we went.
The lessons I learned start with
carrying a sufficient length of anchor
rode. Next, I learned to always carry
tools. Lesson three is to always have a
communication ability — a cellphone
or preferably a VHF radio. Fourth,
don’t turn your engine off when you
are near a known hazard. Finally,
don’t use cheap Styrofoam coolers.
They squeak and break when some-
one steps on them in a panic.
I hope others can benefit from my
youthful stupidity. I have been up
Chippawa Creek many times since
that day without incident, but I have
never turned off my engine. Live
and learn.
Bob Miller
Buffalo, New YorkThe sign, in a typical
Canadian manner of
understatement, read
“Navigation Prohibited.Dangerous Waters Ahead.”
ILLUSTRATION: TIM BOWER