Idiot Repellant?

[whyit21]

If you just so happened to be at the Sanders Ferry Park boat ramp on Sunday around 1:30, you're welcome for the entertainment. I was coming off the water after a crappy crappie trip in which I caught nothing but little bluegill.

This guy comes over to the dock saying, "Hey man you gotta help me! My boat's about to sink, can you tow me back to Anchor High? My motor won't crank, and my bilge doesn't work. Taking on a lot of water!"

So his boat is swept up against the bank right on the far side of the airplane field close to the picnic shelter over there. Not the one close to the ramp. It's super shallow on a straight line, so I tell him I'll run out to the channel and tow him back to the Sanders Ferry ramp. There are 3ft rollers and I've only got a 70hp motor, so there's no way in hell I'm risking taking him back to Anchor High.

We get hooked up and I tow him and nearly full throttle because his boat is fiberglass and full of water. Full Throttle equaled 8mph according to GPS. Get to the dock at Sanders Ferry just in time. I run up to get my trailer in the water so we can at least get his out before it sinks. Too late. Back of the boat is on the bottom before I even get the trailer in the water. The boat is literally 90% submerged. By now this dude is in the water pulling his boat with a rope. I helped him get it over to my trailer, and we crank and push as hard as we can. Keep in mind my trailer is for a 16' Alumacraft. He's got a 19' deep draft runabout with a 115hp outboard. I pulled that heavy bastard out while dragging the back of his boat on the ramp. There are fiberglass skidmarks on the left side of the ramp now.

Took 30 min for it to drain while another guy ran him over to Anchor High to get his trailer. In the meantime the guy's girlfriend tells me they boought the boat a week ago Friday!!!! So you buy a boat and take it out without checking all your equipment on a day with 35MPH WINDS??!! What a moron! Evaluating this guy's stupidity wasn't going to get his boat off my trailer, so a few other strangers and I propped the boat up with some shims. I put a few small logs underneath the transom and rolled the SOB back in the water to float it. We walked it over to his trailer which was now right beside mine.

Somehow everything worked out, my trailer looked broken with his boat on it, but thank God it wasn't. I pulled my boat out with a quickness, and headed straight home.

I could never allow another human being to sink or get stranded, but self preservation can make you question it. It really pisses me off that people can put themselves in dangerous situations only to endanger others. I've had some close calls myself, and as boaters we will all be at the mercy of a stranger's help at some point.

Be careful out there guys. Idiot season has officially begun on the water. Almost makes me wish it was 40 degrees again. Cold is the only idiot repellant I can think of. Stupid people don't live to make mistakes then.

Anyone got any similar stories?

[Canoe2]

Thanks for the laugh! Sounds like he's lucky he wasn't floating face down in the same cove as his boat.

Sorry you didn't have any luck on the crappie and had your afternoon ruined.

[Canoe2]

My story combined stupidity with child endangerment. Back in 1995, a friend of mine and his wife were canoeing with me on Clear Creek, a tributary to the Obed River near Crossville.

This water has class 3+ rapids so you kind of need to know what's downstream when you put in a canoe.

Short version. We round a bend and hear cries for help. We arrive upon a flipped and sunken canoe and see two kids clinging to a cooler, which is trapped just above a 2' drop into churning rapids. We then see two adult women standing over on the bank waving for help.

We get everyone rescued from the river and then notice all the "party supplies." Yes, 4 people in one canoe, one lifejacket, small plastic paddles for an inflatable raft, a bottle of booze and a plastic bag of "smoke." We were amazed they made it as far downstream as they did.

I knew a trail out of the gorge, so I hiked them up and instructed them to hike upstream along the bluff trail to their car. The canoe was sunken and not retrievable but we carried some of their stuff down to the take-out.

It was fairly warm that day but by evening there would have been a real hypothermia risk. They were extremely lucky we came along. The river was at a marginal flow for canoeing, so we might have been the only people coming down anytime soon.

The one funny thing to end our wasted afternoon of enjoying a beautiful day on the river was when we arrived back at my truck. One of the women had scrawled a note on a paper bag in lipstick that read, "Thanks for saving us...BTW, I did not get to inquire as to your marital status?" It ended with her phone number.

Ha. Missed my chance that hookup!

[jaycee]

Last spring as I was unloading off my trailer and was parking my vehicle and trailer, I saw a boat in the parking lot getting a jump start to his boat. The motor started and the guy jumps in his car and heads for the ramp to unload his started, running boat.

Now I am not making this up. I am not that creative.

He gets the boat in the water and parks his car. Then he starts his voyage out into the lake.

Next time I see him he is paddling. He sees me and starts yelling for a tow. I told him no way as he should have thought about the dead battery before he started out. Now I am not all that mean as I had taken note that the wind was blowing toward the ramp and he would eventually make it in to shore by paddling for direction. And he did make it in, I made sure of it.

The bad thing is he had a woman with him and the gene pool will continue.

And they lived happily ever after.

[tkwalker]

As most of you know I repair vintage (as well as newer) outboard motors ... You would be surprised but over 50% of the people who walk through my door, do not have any business owning, much less operating a boat ... And as a boat owner and ramp user for over 47 years ... I could write a book on Ramp etiquette, and things I have seen (and also done myself LOL !!) Some is very funny ... and some very pathetic ... Good post and thread guys ... <'TK><

[Travis C.]

Funny stories...

To narrow the stuff I have seen down is going to be hard.

One of the funniest idiot's I have ever seen on the water was an asian guy below Old hickory Dam a generator running standing waste deep and washing with a bar of soap.

Ever notice how the biggest idiots seem to show up when the ramps are the busiest?
We were at the State Park boat ramp on Barren River Lake a few years back trying to put in. This group of 7-8 people come pulling down the ramp with a big ski boat that to find out later they had just got. It was immediately obvious they were either new to boating, idiots, completely inconsiderate or a combo of all 3. They bypassed the parking area to get their stuff out of truck and into the boat or get the boat ready to go in the water. They pull down the ramp and swing into the turnaround and everyone gets out of the truck and starts wandering around aimlessly putting stuff in boat and just messing around. This ramp is wide enough to have 3 trailers on it at once but they have the turnaround blocked so no one can get in or out. They stay on turnaround for almost 15 minutes, several people in line tying to get boats in the water, several boats in the water trying to get out. They finally try to back down to the water but the one driving can't back a trailer. After about 10 minutes they finally get boat in water taking up 2 of 3 lanes. Start the boat and try to back it off the trailer. It won't come off!!! Guy is hammer down on big inboard and it won't move. They holler at driver of the truck and hav them back down more into the water and hammer down again. Still nothing. They back the truck down till the exhaust is in the water and keep trying to back off the trailer. They are in so deep in the water that the boat has the trailer floating with it drifting side to side as the guy cuts the wheel back and forth with it in reverse wide open. Two guys climb off the side of the boat onto the side of the trailer trying to push boat off trailer while he is still wide open on the throttle. Someone down on the ramp finally told them to take the transom straps loose and it would come off better. They pull up and sure enough they had never unstrapped the boat from the trailer. They said they just bought it and had never done this before. There should be some kind of boat safety class and launch ramp/lake ettiquette class everyone should have to take before they can own a boat.

[backdoc]

This could technically happen to anyone but a jaw dropper never the less.

I was on KY Lake and watched a guy back his nice bass boat down into the water. He tossed a stow rope and anchor off to the side of the ramp to keep place while he pulled out. When he went to pull the trailer out, the anchor rope got hung on the trailer and he proceeded to beach his very nice bass boat right on the ramp. He had his windows up so he couldnt hear anyone yelling to stop. Ouch.

[MattR]

My wife and I keep a boat at Four Corners on Priest and saw this little gem involving a 'watercraft' last summer.

We left out in the early afternoon just to have some fun on the water and we noticed a group of people on the north side of the cove hanging out and enjoying the day in the former park area. Fishing, swimming, frisbee, the usual summer activities. They even had a little inflatable pool tool that looked like a castle.

After a few hours, the wife and I are motoring back in and I notice this castle is now well out into the water, nearly to the channel marker. I thought that was a shame that the wind had grabbed their toy and pulled it out into the lake, but after I got to where I could see behind it I noticed a pair of adult legs sticking out of it and kicking! Not towards shore mind you, but further into the lake. Luckily, TWRA kept a boat just a few slips down from ours and there were two officers stowing everything away from the evening. I walked up to them and told them what was going on and pointed to the castle and after the officer had a look through his binoculaurs, he concluded that since they were kicking they obviously wanted to be out there and went back to what he was doing. I just stood there for a second and then walked back to my own boat.

I was debating whether or not to go back out and get this idiot (he was now past the red buoy and into the channel proper) when another group in a ski boat pulled up and dragged he and his 'watercraft' aboard. That could have ended tragically in about 100 different ways.

Summer is almost here! Keep your eyes open out there and be safe!

[YumDinger]

Last summer took a trip to Chattanooga to fish Riverpark for catfish. Had a great day and as I headed back to the ramp I was thinking, this is one of those days where nothing can go wrong. As I pulled my boat up on the bank to walk to my car to get my trailer, this boat with 3 dudes and 2 girls in it comes flying up to the ramp.

I could hear the girls screaming and as soon as that boat touched the ramp those girls were out of that boat, and 2 of the dudes were within seconds of a fight. One of the guys had what I thought was dirt covering his face, like someone scooped up muck from the bottom of a lake and just threw a mud pie in his face. I went up to one of the girls that jumped off that boat so quickly and asked her if everything was ok. She said "not really". Apparently they were on the water drinking all day and one of the guys in the boat passes out. One of the other guys on the boat thinks it a good idea to play a joke on his buddy by farting in his face when he passed out, but doing it bare butt. The girl stated that at that time the guy tried to let out a big fart right in his buddy's face, but instead he sprayed diarrea all over this guy's face getting it on the boat also.

2 morals to this story:

1) Don't get wasted while boating.
2) If you do get wasted, don't drink crappy beer and pass out with a jokster on board.

Never saw or will probably see anything like this again. True idiots.

[jackson]

Where I'm from we call that "eating the stinkbait"!

[jaycee]

No More Stories Please. We Have A Winner. The Winner Is Stinkbait.

[whyit21]

Think stinkbait got pink eye?? Hilarious. Wow there are some amazing people out there!

[Travis C.]

That is great..... at least he didn't try to light it on fire.

[Travis C.]

A buddy of mine went on a canoe trip to the Big South Fork in early April a few years ago. They went from Leatherwood to Blue Heron about twenty miles. Towards the end are two half-to rapids to portage in a canoe. One is Big Shoals and Devils Jump the other. Devils jump is one mean mother...a narrow class 4 that has a right turn and about a 4-5ft drop between two big rocks.

Everything was great on the trip with high flows made it go fast. They encountered Big Shoals first and forgot about both rapids. After they almost turned over the canoe in that rapid they composed themselves long enough to see people up above cheering. There is Devils Jump Overlook between the two rapids. My buddy in the front tries to stand and fist pump thinking it was Devils Jump only to realize at that point they are screwed and see's it up ahead.

The two guys with an over night worth of gear in a 15ft canoe hit that rapid no paddles holding onto the sides of the canoe. My buddy in the front ends up after being hit with a wall of water in rear of the canoe sitting in the others lap. Finally when they are clear and in slower water limping towards the bank with half the gear they took my buddy notices the canoe is full of water to within an inch of completely being full.

I am so glad my buddy came back when I heard the story. But I would have gave anything to have seen him standing full fist pump and realizing he is screwed.

Here is the rapid: