Ben and I got invited to go out on a house boat with some friends for the fourth. So, naturally, we went. After all, seeing the Nashville fireworks display from a boat on the Cumberland away from the 10s of thousands of people that would be crowded on land sounded fabulous. Ok so it didn't work out as planned but I am confident that we had more fun than we would have had if we were able to see the fireworks.
The boat was from 1974, 34 years old. The engine worked great but the rest, not so much.
So we finally get off the dock and are cruising along when all the sudden the boat shut off. Yep, that's right folks, we were out of gas. Apparently the owner spent $500 on gas the last time they went out and thought there was more left, naturally. $500 is a lot of money for one boat trip! We made calls and couldn't get ahold of ANYONE to help. So we were stuck and we decided to make the best of it... We were all hanging out, eating chips and such, when I look out and see a barge coming directly at us.
Our friend, formerly a marine, came to the rescue and pulled the boat, with a rope, to the "shore." Of course the shore happened to be a cliff with a steep pathway. He managed to climb far enough to tie the boat off to a tree. We anchored the other side and were saved from the barge. 4 hours later we got a call from the guy who was going to bail us out after the fireworks show. He told us we would be better off having the guard come out. Yep, if you didn't know there is a coast guard active on the Cumberland River in the middle of TN. Funny, huh? So the guy called them and we waited... while it began to storm... The coast guard got there and after 30 minutes or more of convening they decided to side tow the house boat. Although we should have gotten like 15 fines, we managed to get out of them all with the promise to fix them.
Moral of the story: you can be stranded in the middle of the Cumberland and have a lot of stuff go wrong and still have a blast!!!
P.S. I decided to spare you all from the bathroom stories that came out of that boat trip. Hehe.
No comments:
Post a Comment