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2006-08-07 - 1:15 p.m.

“A damn poop mess!”

Water Police: Wild on the Water premieres tonight on CourtTV. When I saw the announcement for the show’s debut my first thought was: “Ah, shit, they got the Brew Crew on film Saturday afternoon!”

Saturday dawned sunny and hot (not unlike most days this summer) and the Brew Crew was geared up for a day on the lake. The boat was leaving the docks at 1:00. Thunder started to rumble in the west about 11a.m., the heavy rain started about 11:45. But, it was not going to rain on our parade; our little squirt Dixie was back from Kansas City for the weekend, so we decided to gather on my front porch and make the best of the day. By the time the Crew arrived at the house, the short storm had blown out, the sun was shining again and the beer was on ice. Cruising would prevail.

We arrived in our favorite back cove (Baja) only 45 minutes later than our original planned time. It was windy, so we spent about 20 minutes getting the anchor set so we could play and not have to worry about where the boat might float off to. And those were our only worries or problems. For the next few hours, anyway.

We played and visited and ate boat treats and had a great afternoon, nothing unusual about that. The Crew does have an innate ability to have some great afternoons. Some of our afternoon discussions are not for print—I’d get a good smackin from some members—but we covered several significant topics: the creative use of Mayo, the origin of Dixie’s wine ‘sippy’ glass, whether a bra looks like a bra or a swimsuit top, and if bubbles in the water are an indication a fish is about to bite your ass.

Late in the afternoon Pat needed to leave the party and--after a stop at the store for her own jar of Mayo--go home to make potato salad for the next day’s picnic at her parents’ home.

Our troubles were just about to begin!

We cruised to the dock to let Pat off. Since the rest of us were staying out a while longer we weren’t going to dock my boat…we were going to nose to the dock and let her jump off. And we did all of that okay. What wasn’t okay was the wind blowing in from the southwest; it took Pat’s hat in one gust and whipped the boat around. Pat was on the dock attempting to hold the boat, SueSue, also on the dock, decided she’d try to save Pat’s “favorite two-buck K-Mart” hat!

And within seconds we were in trouble. Or, according to SueSue, “a damn poop mess!”

SueSue leaned over the dock—into my docking slip—to get the hat, but it was quickly floating away, but there was an easy solution. She slipped into the water to get it…and hooked the crotch of her swimsuit on the tie-up cleat on the dock. The suit ripped, and she’s in the water, bare hind end shining.

Cap’n VLee, Dixie and I are still on the boat, but another gust of wind takes the boat and whips it fully around with the stern now in the narrow channel between docks, and we were about to lose control. Because Pat was still (trying) holding the boat, when the gust jerked the boat it also pulled her off the dock and back onto the bow—where she landed, belly down on the ladder.

And the screaming began!

From where I was in the driver’s seat, I couldn’t see Pat or SueSue, but knew one, if not both, were somewhere in the water. I shut the engine off, and that’s when we lost control of the boat. It was under wind steam heading straight down the shoot, moving directly into other boats in the docks. Although it was only minutes, it seemed an eternity before we could see SueSue in the water and I was able to start the boat and get it back under control and attempt to fight the wind (which was stronger than the engine speed I was able to use in the position we were in in the docking area) and get us close to the dock where Pat could crawl off the front onto the dock. We got there, Pat stepped toward the dock, the wind hit again, the boat jerked back and Pat went not onto the dock but into the lake. Now I definitely had two people in the lake somewhere in front of the boat.

And the screaming began again.

I shut the engine off again and we were once again in free float in the channel between docks. Finally, both SueSue and Pat got to the side of the boat and were able to hang onto the swim platform while I slowly drove out of the docking area, with a lot of help from VLee and Dixie who were leaning off the left side pushing us away from boats in the dock to our left. Once away from the docks, we lowered the ladder and loaded the two drowned rats (one with a very bare behind) back on the boat.

And then the shaking set in.

We do have fun, but we aren’t idiots on the water and have had a lifetime of experience on the water. It didn’t take long for us to realize we had come very close to a water tragedy. Our afternoon was over! We circled back into the main channel and brought the boat into the dock—without incident, although we had SueSue wrapped in a towel--tied off and unloaded.

Then we saw the water patrol and state park cop standing on the deck at the marina. Unless they were both blind or had been inside playing gin, they had witnessed our docking fiasco. We grabbed what dignity we could and strolled down the pier and off the dock and to our cars. Neither cop bothered to come help us when we were obviously in trouble, but they didn’t say a word to us as we left, either.

“A damn poop mess” indeed!

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