![]() They got further and further away till they were gone. He was watching us while dad had his back to us and waved back at us. We shouted and waved to the boy in his boat who was maybe 6 or 7 years old. He was headed back home and didn't hear us. We shouted at him once we realized we couldn't fix it ourselves, but he had put his own outboard motor in the water after he took his sails down. We were saved! He had his boat tied to the back of our boat, so we didn't want to start the prop till he got his away, but it was in the water!Īfter he was about 10 feet away, we turned the key and it was dead. We told him of our troubles, and he jumped up on our boat and after some tinkering was able to get our prop to drop into the water. The guy stopped when he saw us frantically yelling at him, and threw us a line. It was smaller even than our boat, which was tiny, and really not made for the ocean. It ended up being a really tiny little (for lack of a better term) make-it-yourself sailboat, crewed by a father and his kid. It was pretty far away but it WAS coming more or less towards us. Once night hit, everyone knew we were in trouble.Īs the sun was almost set, we saw a light blinking in the breaks between waves. Our parents, we later found out, knew of our distress pretty quickly and were watching the boat from shore trying to figure out what we were doing. As part of the rental agreement, the boat was also not supposed to be out past sunset so it didn't have any running lights or a radio. This was a while ago (I am an old man) so we all didn't have cell phones handy like most kids do these days. The shore was more or less just a line on the horizon and the trees were barely discernible. We pushed off from the beach at about 1:30pm and it was now around 6pm. At that point we surmised, the water was already too deep for it to hit anything. The anchor line was no more than 10 feet long, and when we dropped it we didn't slow down. At that time we decided we had better drop the anchor so we don't drift anymore. We are still drifting because there was a very big slack tide that was just pulling our boat further and further from shore. We are pushing and pushing on it, but it just won't go into the water no matter what we do. Now we are maybe 200 yards from shore and can't see the bottom anymore, so we decide to drop the outboard into the water, only the thing won't budge. We let ourselves drift out a ways from shore. We kept bumping up on the bars under us because there was a big slack tide at the time, so we decided to just wait before dropping the prop so we wouldn't ruin it. ![]() We pushed the boat off the shoreline and into shallow water. We decide to steal the keys to our 16 foot skiff that was beached and go for a joy ride. My step brother and I are 15 years old and our parents are being boring wandering around the park looking at trees and what not. Bahia Honda State Park in the Florida Keys.
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