Anchors Away!

One of the certain things about the River is that it not only gives, but that it also takes. Or more precisely, you will eventually give something back to it.

No one who spends any amount of time on or near the water has escaped the "giving back" part. Inevitably, and always involuntarily. Have you ever been boating along, minding your own business when a gust of wind suddenly blows your hat and or glasses off, never to be seen again? Or how about changing your boat propeller near shore and as careful as you are, you accidentally drop the lock nut and wrench in the water. No problem, right? I was only in 3 feet of water and it fell right between my feet.

20 years later I am still looking for them. People have accidentally dropped their fishing poles, tackle boxes, picnic baskets, phones, wallets or keys in the water. Boat fenders get lost. Maybe you - or someone you know - can relate. Props have even been known to fly off while underway. (guilty) A friend of mine was wrestling with an outboard motor when it slipped from his hands. He watched it disappear into the depths without so much as a splash goodbye.

As long as I feel that I am going to confession here, I should mention the time I lost an anchor. I dropped anchor in a large bay well away from an island that had a large, posted sign warning of an underwater power cable. Staying well away from it, my anchor somehow snagged a phone line. Try as I might with every maneuver I could think of, I couldn’t get it free. The sign warned where the cable came ashore but I had no way of knowing which direction it ran underwater. My choice was to break the cable or lose my anchor. Having been the unintended victim of fishermen severing my Island phone line 3 different times over the years, I bid
adieu to my anchor and 100 feet of really good line.

I know exactly where it rests today, in about twenty feet of water. I just can't get to it. A few years after we bought the island, we were visiting neighbors across the channel when a storm exploded out of nowhere. It wasn't just a storm—it was a full-blown microburst.

We raced back to our island only to discover that two of our four heavy teak dock chairs had vanished. They hadn't been stolen. They had simply been launched into the St. Lawrence like unwilling cruise passengers.

That was the day we learned an important River Rat lesson: dock furniture isn't chained down to keep thieves away. It's chained down to keep it from emigrating. Since the storm had just passed, we figured the chairs couldn't have drifted very far. We climbed into the boat and searched up and down the River, expecting to find them bobbing happily on the surface.

Nothing.

They had disappeared without a trace. Until... Ten years later.

We were invited to visit new neighbors about half a mile downstream.
As we stepped onto their dock, I stopped in my tracks. "Those chairs look exactly like the two we lost in a storm years ago," I said.

Our hosts smiled. "We found them floating down the River after that storm about ten years ago," they replied. After a decade-long vacation, our wandering chairs had finally been repatriated.

Moving up the escalation loss ladder, I was swapping out a large, heavy TV for a new flat screen. The TV was the type that had the old- style deep glass screen and weighed about 150 pounds. After a great deal of grunting, we wrestled it onto our 18-foot Rinker and lashed it securely to the tiny swim platform. We crossed the River without incident, tied up at the dock, and prepared to load it onto a trailer for its final trip to the landfill.

As soon as we untied it, the television slipped. Straight into the River.

The surprising part was that it didn't sink.

Those old picture tubes were full of air so it floated like a cork. That left me with the delightful task of jumping into the River and wrestling 150 pounds of floating television back onto the dock. The river almost won that round.

Then came the washing machine. Same Rinker. Same narrow platform. The washer was tied securely and the trip to the island was uneventful. Only my strong son-in-law saved that day. As we lost our grip unloading it, he was determined not
to let it go on his watch. It was so close that the outer cardboard packaging ended up soaking wet.

Not everything the River receives is accidental. Unfortunately, there are still a few places that discharge untreated sewage into the river. Or that a handful of people -including a few unscrupulous contractors- have taken a shortcut and used the deep
parts of the River as a dump site. It’s easier and cheaper to push trash overboard under the cover of darkness than to dispose of it properly.

Scuba divers have been amazed at what they have discovered over the years.
Then there was the time the River tried to claim my amphibious airplane. Twice. But, some stories are better saved for another day.

Do you have story to tell? What have you lost to the mighty St. Lawrence River?

I have learned that if you don’t want any of these mishaps to happen, the solution is simple: don’t do anything. Don’t go anywhere. Don’t try anything and you will never make a mistake. Boats are always safe in harbor, but that is not what boats are for.

By Michael Laprade