Today, in my checkstand, I was reminiscing about my former home area, the Copper Country, in Michigans Upper Peninsula, and its crowning glory, the astounding Lake Superior. About 1965 - 66, my dad accepted a 16 wooden runabout boat as settlement of a business debt someone owed him. Dad gave me a free hand to sand down the boat, choose a color scheme, and paint the boat in any design Id choose. I chose red, white, and black, and he was quite pleased with the results, Im proud to say. We further outfitted the boat with a 50-horsepower Mercury outboard engine, with front-seat steering and throttle control. Choosing a name for the boat? That was Dads choice. The three of us youngest (of seven) in the family had the first initials of B, V, and D (Beth, Vida, David.) He cleverly named the boat the BeeVeeDee, a bit of a play on an underwear brand! He had a lively sense of humor, right, Amy Jordan and Pauline Ryynanen? Anyway, with the onset of hot weather here in the great Northwest, a lot of folks are thinking about getting out on the water (or IN it!) Which leads me to my story concerning Lake Superior . . . . One windy day, I took the BeeVeeDee out for a ride, solo. Now, on the protected waters of Portage Lake - where we kept the BeeVeeDee moored - the wind was not a serious factor. But Portage Lake connects to Lake Superior, a veritable inland ocean (so vast, one cannot see the opposing shoreline, just a watery horizon.) You can imagine the size of the waves on the Big Lake when theres a heavy blow! (Remember the Edmund Fitzgerald story?) Well, ol Dave was young and adventurous, and he thought, H-m-m-m, should I try the Big Lake, just-this-once, in a high wind? Oh, why not? So, out through the entry channel I go, out past the breakwater, onto the wavy surface. And wavy it was! I remember mounting a wave and having a vast vista of rolling whitecaps, to the horizon. Then shooting down the backside of a huge wave, finding myself in the trough between waves, with nothing but high rolling walls of water on two, maybe three, sides of me. Riding a few of those waves, and I had had enough! Time to go back into more-protected waters. NOW the question was, Can I get this little tub turned around safely, without getting broadsided and flipped over? And remember the old saying, Dave? Lake Superior never gives up her dead? Good luck, silly guy! Well, as you can see/read/tell, I made it back to Portage Lake, feeling VERY relieved . . . and VERY content to never do something so stupid again! I dont recall, but Im pretty sure I never told my dad about my adventure! You know, youre never too old (even at the ripe old age of 19 or so) to get grounded. Literally! Never again allowed to go out on water with the boat again, at least not SOLO!
Posted on: Sun, 13 Jul 2014 07:09:27 +0000
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