So I was about 9 years old at the time and we were out on a family fishing day.....Mom & Dad, and my 2 older brothers and sister. My Dad decides it's time to pull anchor and go to another hotspot for crappies. Of course he tells all of us kids to reel in our lines and stow anything that will fly around while underway in a tri-hull. His next instruction was to my 17 year old brother to pull in the anchor.
Now we all heard it plain as day, he even asked him to make sure he had done it, and of course my brother just says "yeah, yeah". Well, Dad fires up the boat and puts her in gear.......we made it about 12 feet!!!! Our ever faithful Merc 70 quit cold.........as my father got plenty hot.
He turns the ignition off and walks to the stern, reaches over and flips the tilt lever and pulls the Merc up out of the water, attached to the bottom of our black beauty was a tighly wadded up mess of red and white nylon anchor rope...........hmmmmmm "it looks like ours" I say to my father..........hey I was 9 and didn't know that stating the obvious was not the best thing to do.
Well Dad knows what to do, he looks at the depth finder and it's showing 3 feet of water, time to jump in and remove that rope from the prop. So over the side he goes :sploosh:................"Mom where's Dad?" well when he surfaced a few seconds later, he resembled Swamp Thing.
It turns out we were actually in about 13ft of water with weeds and muck from 3 feet on down (the old flasher units didn't decipher false bottom reads). My father cleaned the algae and weeds from around his head and removed the anchor rope from the prop and climbed back into the boat.
Well my 17 year old brother in all of his infinite attempts to turn my father into a ballistic missile without a guidance system says........."so uh Dad are we ready to go now". Dad's reply was quick and to the point "not yet" as he grabbed my brother and tossed him overboard "now we are" he yelled at him. I honestly never knew that my father could toss a teenager farther than an anchor, until then!!!
It's been 28 years since that day, and nobody in the family has ever lost an anchor or rope due to this kind of oversight, I guess we all know why.
Now we all heard it plain as day, he even asked him to make sure he had done it, and of course my brother just says "yeah, yeah". Well, Dad fires up the boat and puts her in gear.......we made it about 12 feet!!!! Our ever faithful Merc 70 quit cold.........as my father got plenty hot.
He turns the ignition off and walks to the stern, reaches over and flips the tilt lever and pulls the Merc up out of the water, attached to the bottom of our black beauty was a tighly wadded up mess of red and white nylon anchor rope...........hmmmmmm "it looks like ours" I say to my father..........hey I was 9 and didn't know that stating the obvious was not the best thing to do.
Well Dad knows what to do, he looks at the depth finder and it's showing 3 feet of water, time to jump in and remove that rope from the prop. So over the side he goes :sploosh:................"Mom where's Dad?" well when he surfaced a few seconds later, he resembled Swamp Thing.
It turns out we were actually in about 13ft of water with weeds and muck from 3 feet on down (the old flasher units didn't decipher false bottom reads). My father cleaned the algae and weeds from around his head and removed the anchor rope from the prop and climbed back into the boat.
Well my 17 year old brother in all of his infinite attempts to turn my father into a ballistic missile without a guidance system says........."so uh Dad are we ready to go now". Dad's reply was quick and to the point "not yet" as he grabbed my brother and tossed him overboard "now we are" he yelled at him. I honestly never knew that my father could toss a teenager farther than an anchor, until then!!!
It's been 28 years since that day, and nobody in the family has ever lost an anchor or rope due to this kind of oversight, I guess we all know why.
. Distant brothers? Now a days you would be considered a bad father and someone would turn you in! We need more "Tough Love" like we got growing up.
