Freddie P's Blog

August 18, 2008 @ 08:55

I was home for most of the week but headed for the tin palace alone on Thursday afternoon.

Of course when I arrived it had just rained, but it cleared long enough around the supper hour to sit with a few friends and talk about all the lost moments this year because of the bizarre weather.

After dinner on Thursday night it rained again, stopped again, and then rained for most of the night.

On Friday morning there was a patch of blue to the west of us, so a couple of my buddies and their wives decided a boat trip from our lake to Bobcaygeon would be a idea.

They asked me if I wanted to go, and not having anything else to do because my "friends" Mike and Brian decided to go golfing with their wives instead of me, I accepted.

It was weird. I can never remember the weather patterns and skies that we've had this year. Although we enjoyed sunshine most of the way, there were swirling black clouds all around us and we could see several rain storms in the distance.

The trip was uneventful until we were just entering Bobcaygeon. I was driving in a boat with my buddy Glen and he was just in front of my buddy Jason.

Glen has an 18 foot boat with a 90 Mercury on it, while Jason has a 21 foot monster SeaDoo boat.

As we approached Bobcaygoen, Glen pulled back on his throttle and for a split second, Jason who was fast approaching didn't notice. All of a sudden he was too close and his natural reaction was to pull back on the throttle.

Unfortunately SeaDoo boats don't respond very well without thrust and the boat was momentarily out of control and broke the wake literally inches away from Glen's boat. It lifted the boat out of the water.

My buddy Dan Bonchek screamed at Glen to "hit it" so we could pull away from the huge hull of the SeaDoo boat that appeared ready to crash down on the back of our boat.

At first I didn't realize what was happening in the confusion, so by the time I turned around all I could see was the bottom of a huge boat coming towards me. But at that split second it was the turning point of the near tragedy. As the big boat lunged towards us, we barely pulled out of its path.

It was that close.

Where I was sitting would have taken the full brunt, which means if it didn't kill me I would have probably been shitting into a bag for the rest of my life.

It took everybody a little while to wind down because to be honest, it wasn't pretty and no exaggeration. With another second the wrong way, it could have been ugly.

It shows you how quickly accidents can happen, and explains some of those inexplicable things you hear on the news some time and wonder how the hell they can happen.

Well they can. And there was absolutely no alcohol involved and Jason wasn't being careless because his boat was full of little kids.

It was just one of those things.

After having a bite to eat in Bobcaygeon we headed home, a race against the usual impending rain and the locks closing in Buckhorn. We beat them both, but not long after arriving home, the rain had its way and lasted most of the evening.