LandfallVoyages

This is the story of my family’s long nautical tradition.

When I was small, in the 60’s, my family made a trip to the Salton Sea. My dad was a bit of a partier and his boat was a classic P.O.S. It was a 16′ flat-bottomed lake boat with a big V-8 and a direct drive. He decided (drunk) that it would be a good idea to blast back and forth, parallel to the beach (and inside the 5MPH no-wake zone), to make waves on the beach for the children to play in.

It wasn’t long before the USCG noticed what he was up to and they hailed him over. Obligingly, he headed out towards their boat (still drunk) to have a little chat. Now, there were a couple of critical problems with his boat.

• First off, the engine refused to idle below 2000 RPM’s, so it’s slowest speed was about 10 MPH.
• The engine was a direct drive, so there was no way to slow it down except for to turn the engine off.
• Also, the ignition switch was loose in the dash, so you had to reach around the back and hold the body of the switch in order to use the key to turn the engine off.
• But wait, there’s more…The wires on the back of the ignition switch would shock you if you touched them.
• Finally, the steering wheel was stripped on the shaft, so you had to cock the wheel sideways to get it turn.

He headed out towards the Coast Guard boat (still drunk) and tried to pull alongside as instructed. After he stuck his arm through the steering wheel to cock it, he reached around to hold the back of the switch and turn the key off. Unfortunately the exposed wires on the switch shocked him and he flinched, thus releasing the whole steering wheel/ key/ switch assembly and causing him to merrily plow right into the side of the CG boat. Bow first, at the aforementioned 10 MPH.

The bow of his boat punched a hole in the side of the Coastie’s boat and boy were they were pissed. UMM, yes, his voyage was terminated. But that’s not the best part. 30 years later and all the way across the ocean in Honolulu, my lovely wife was a new MK3 (Engineer 3rd class), hanging around in the ready room “talking story” with the rest of the crew. A crusty old USCG Chief who’d been enlisted since the dawn of time was sharing some of his best sea stories. Believe it or not, the finest story of his collection was from when he was a young Boatswainmate , stationed on the Salton Sea and some stupid drunk a** punched a hole in the side of his boat.

The story rang very familiar to Tamiko’s ears.