That Was Helpful

Every summer for the last 9 or 10 years a buddy and I have made our way to Lake Temagami in northern Ontario for a week or so of fishing at Loon Lodge.  We'd hook his boat up to the back of his GMC Jimmy and set out for the 7 hour trip from Ottawa to Temagami.

About an hour shy of our destination, we'd stop in North Bay to purchase our provisions: groceries, beer and wine.  Enough to last us through the week.  Since we'd be eating our dinners at the lodge we only had to worry about breakfasts, lunches and snacks.  So bacon and eggs, cold meat, cheeses, bread, chips and pickled eggs rounded out our shopping list.  And ice.  After all we had to get a head start on cooling down the beer.

An hour later we'd arrive at the landing, put the boat in the water, load it with our "provisions", park the Jimmy and slowly make our way to the lodge.

Lake Temagami

It's been the same routine every year.  And each year our enjoyable week of fishing and relaxing has passed uneventfully.  Except one year.

One year, we woke up to the sounds of yelling and splashing.  When we got up to see what was going on we discovered another fisherman's boat had sunk overnight in the mini-marina at the back of the lodge.  It was an old wooden boat, the owner of which admitted had a tendency to leak.  Well leak it did and my friend and I laughed pretty much all day over the incident.  And here's why.

Fishin' buddies

The day before my buddy and I were out at mid-day trolling the shore of one of the lake's estuaries.  It was raining but we didn't care.  That's what fishing's all about.  We both had our life jackets on, we wore ball caps and we had rainproof jackets and pants so we didn't really care about the rain.

My buddy thought he had a bite and tugged on his line.  It was then we realized the motor had stopped.  Try as he might my buddy couldn't get the engine started.  I even tried.  Like I know about boats and motors.  So we got out the paddles and paddled to the nearest dock.  We had visions of paddling all the way back to the lodge which was quite a hike but there happened to be someone above the dock opening up his cottage for the season.  As luck would have it, he had a phone.  So we phoned the lodge and asked the lodge owner's wife if she could radio the lodge owner in his boat to come and tow us.

About 30-45 minutes later the lodge owner showed up.  Now there were four of us scratching our heads wondering what the hell the problem could be.  And by now the rain is just pouring down.  All of a sudden the cottage owner looks down at the three of us in the boat and says, "Say, does your boat have a kill switch?"  Now a kill switch is a safety device next to the throttle to which the driver attaches his life vest via a cord.  If the driver falls out of the boat, the engine automatically stops or is killed.  So a light goes on over my buddy's head.  He flips the kill switch, the engine roars to life and the four of us shake our heads.  But thankfully, the cottage owner was a big help.  And the lodge owner was willing to help.

My buddy, me and the lodge owner - we actually do catch fish!

Flash forward to the next day and the other fella's sunken boat. I turned to my buddy and I said, "Boy you must be really happy, eh?" "Happy, why?" he says. "Well, that tops what happened to us yesterday and now folks at the lodge will have somebody else to laugh at.  Wasn't that helpful?"


The prompt over at Theme Thursday this week is "help". Clicking the link will aid in you seeing how other bloggers covered off this theme.