Family adventures in boat owning
Now I don’t know boats all I know is I think it was a cruiser it had 2 small beds below deck and you could comfortable hold a dozen in the back.

First run out nearly the whole family (not me though) is on it. Go through all checks and realise they don’t have a depth finder with them and it doesn’t seem worth the trouble of driving 2 mins back up the road. So with a “sure we’ll be grand” off they went.

Now sorry but I must give a bit of info on our pier area, 2nd deepest port in Ireland (small town in Donegal, Ireland and a very very strong current which meant that it can go from 140ft deep to knee deep in about 10ft and a mix in currents due to the Atlantic meeting the river Swilly so there is constantly changing sandbanks and channels.

Anywho back to the story, they get a bit down the way and everything going grand when the boat comes to a shuddering stop throwing everyone forward in what I’m sure was a hilarious sight with cartoony sound effects.

They had managed to ram the boat not only into but also on top of a sandbank. Cue much dicking around trying to rock it off, reverse it off and no doubt praying to Poseidon himself. Eventually another boat came by and spotted them so a guy grabbed a rope and jumped off into the water and started walking towards them, yip walking, the water was that shallow where they were you were ankle deep despite being in the middle of the lough.

Long story short they eventually got off (fnar fnar) and the lad helping was only stung a few times by jellyfish and a snapped rope across the chest.

Fast-forward a few weeks and I’m home for a few days and my uncle want to take the boat out and test it out after the “incident” so grand lovely time to check and recheck we have everything. Depth finder yip, check again yeah depth finder and GPS yeah have everything and off we go.

Everything going grand all systems are working fine except the engine is sounding odd…. Then there was no sound from the engine. Balls. Open the cover and look in, can’t see anything special about it, no smoke no odd smell just a bit of water but that’s normal right? Hmmm seems to be more and more water, yip more water is coming in from somewhere. Engine was flooded and not going anywhere. So there I am able to see people on shore walking and looking out as our boat sat silent slowly filling with water.

There was only one thing to do and that was ring the coastguard to rescue us. It was quite a scene from the pier as we are dragged and nudged in to the slip and winched out. By the time it was done there was a crowd watching us. We were talk of the town that night. Turns out despite all checks for equipment we forgot 2 things. The 2 rubber bungs at the back that allows water to be drained were sitting on the windowsill of my Grannys kitchen.

We sold the boat soon after

TL:DR My family should never get a boat.
(Samantha Bricks Better half done a poo on, Fri 2 Nov 2012, 9:08, Reply)