Lost In the Bay

906 words

Lost In the Bay

“Did you notice the compass setting when we came out the inlet?” Jim asked with a slightly desperate look on his face.

“Are you kidding? I was in too big a hurry to go fishing just like you were. Don’t blame it on me.”

The inlet at Indian River was renowned for storms coming up quickly, but we never expected anything like this. Hot, bright and sunny was the weather forecast when we pulled out of Jim’s driveway at 6 A.M. towing his new, used motorboat behind us.

Jim had been my best friend just about forever. He was easy going and had never lost his temper as long as I had known him; but, at this moment, he was as upset as I had ever seen him. Now, I am just the opposite which is probably why we like each other so much. I worry about every little thing and always try to anticipate problems. This time, though, I had been too excited to go fishing, and my brain must have shut down. We were both novices at boating and fishing.

"Do you have any idea which way is back?" Jim demanded with an unbelieving expression.

I shook my head, forlornly, and tried to put a "pity me" look on my face. It worked. Jim calmed down.

"I'm sorry," Jim said. "I'm the one piloting the boat, and I should know where we are at all times. We'll figure this out."

We had put in at Oak Orchard and followed the channel out to the inlet at the south end of the Delaware Bay. I estimated we rode along at a steady pace about 45 minutes from the time we entered the bay. Then we cut the engine and dropped anchor, slathered on some sunscreen and baited up. We were after speckled trout to take home to our families for a big fish-fry supper with all the fixings. Right now, that did not look too likely.

“Well, what do you think we should do? Sit here and wait for help?” His eyes were pleading with me now for that magic answer I usually had.

The fog had rolled in so quickly we had hardly noticed until all sight of land had vanished, and we could barely see the ends of our fishing poles. It was eerily quiet; not even a hungry gull could be heard squawking overhead. Which way was the shore? Then we heard this clicking noise. Click, click, click, click….continuously. It was coming from the stern. Jim and I looked at each other with the blood draining from our faces.

“You’d better go look,” he said a little harshly. I guess he had a right; I had let him down.

Nervously, I walked back and leaned over to see what was happening. The water was circling as though it was going down a drain. We must be in a little whirlpool, and it must be turning the prop and making the clicking noise. Unless there was something down there turning the prop. The bottom could be 100 feet or more this far out.

We had set the anchor, we thought, but it looked like we might be drifting. Our boat was small, only 16 feet with an open bow, and, of course, no radio. We had flares, but who would see a flare in this stuff? And we had the oil tankers to worry about. They used this channel to haul oil up to Marcus Hook. They could plow over us and not even feel it!

“Hey, we’d better turn on our running lights,” I said to Jim. At least I had sense enough to think of that. Just then we both heard the sound of a massive hull moving through the water and felt our boat rise a little from its wake. We held our breath for what felt like hours and finally heard it moving off in the opposite direction. We had seen nothing through the thick murk. This was getting spooky.

I heard a big splash behind me and turned so quickly I almost lost my footing. I saw a huge sea turtle that looked about four feet across suddenly dive under the boat. We rocked back and forth, and I clenched the side of the boat until my knuckles turned white. If we lived through this, we would have some story to tell our families!

We were hopelessly disoriented, and there was nothing to do but wait for the fog to lift. If we moved, we could run into something, and we had no idea which direction to go anyway.

After around three hours the fog did lift, and we were able to see the beacon at Indian River flashing our direction home. Jim and I learned a valuable lesson that day about boating. Always take a compass bearing before you get out into open water, but after telling our story to everyone we met when we got in, they said we did the right thing by staying put. They suggested we buy a cb radio if we planned anymore early morning fishing forays. And a boating course would not hurt either! We caught no fish, but we did have an adventure!

When we got home, our families listened in disbelief to our harrowing experience. It had been hot, bright and sunny at home all day! Sadly, we had fish sandwiches from McDonald's for dinner.