Our forays in a homemade 14' plywood skiff with a 35 Evinrude (including some runs over to Bimini) as kids were certainly the stuff a parent's nightmares are made of, but we survived. Granted, we all had years of experience, and (sorta, from a bulletproof teenager's perspective) knew what we were doing. Oh yeah, we were salty dogs, all right. But what usually gets you is the totally unexpected, essentially impossible, thing that you never even considered might happen. And, as always with me, this is leading up to a tale:
A friend of mine's dad had a big sportfisherman. He and his dad were the consummate anglers, and we fished together frequently. They had a little 12' wooden lappy with a tiller-steered outboard they used as a towed tender on trips to the Bahamas. My friend and I fished a lot out of that little boat. One fine winter's day we were anchored off the south end of Elliott Key in the big boat. We had the tender astern. We'd been there for several days, alternating between offshore and inshore fishing. My friend's dad wanted to run across to the Bahamas, and my friend and I wanted to take the little boat down to Angelfish Key and work some of those channels, out of the wind and the roiled up bay. So the old man went east and we went south. Remember, this was before cellular phones, and we didn't have a radio in the little boat. Back then there wasn't near the traffic down there that one sees now, especially in the winter. We found some pretty water and we caught a mess of fish. Meanwhile the weather got a little rowdy. We started back up toward the anchorage, long before his dad was due back. We were taking a pretty good beating, heading into a stiff wind and a heavy chop when we got out in the open bay. It was wet and cold......... As we smashed through the waves a section of the lapstrake hull, near the centerline of the hull, broke loose. Memory fades, but I'm gonna say maybe 2" wide by 8" or 10" long? Water shot up through the hole. I grabbed a towel and some rope and tried to stop the flow (talk about a thumb in a dike) and my buddy decided that we needed to head for the mainland.
I don't know how far it is from Angelfish Key to Matheson Hammock, but it's gotta be well over 20 miles. I recall we ran an awful long way, well over an hour, with water shooting up through the bottom of the boat; some of it landing in the boat and some of it landing behind the boat. I had my foot over the rope and rags in the hole and I was in a bailing frenzy the whole way. And all this in rough water (My fun meter was pegged. Yep. You betcha!) All the while wondering if more of the hull was going to crater...... Anyway, by the time we approached Matheson Hammock the boat had enough water in it that we had slowed considerably. My host never let off the throttle; it was still WOT all the way to the ramp. And up on to the ramp. Then he shut it down, after we ground to a halt. A modest gathering was present, enjoying the spectacle. Probably the crowning moment was when, after we ground to a halt on the concrete, he stood up, opened the cooler, and grabbed us a couple of bottles of beer. Both of us were obviously too young to drink legally, but neither of us cared at that point. Musta been a real Kodak moment for the spectators.
We were lucky. In the summer that wouldn't have been such a big deal, but being that it was in the winter, during an infrequent cold spell, we could have fared a whole lot worse than we did. I don't think I'd have tried for a marina that far north, but my bud was the skipper and it was his call. A friend in the Coast Guard took care of notifying his dad, and we got someone to come pick us up at Matheson Hammock (we both lived in the Gables). IIRC the old lappy got scrapped and a new fiberglass skiff replaced it.
Now, the odds of that hull cratering like that were obviously something that had never occurred to us. And had it not happened, the trip would likely have been uneventful, with a short, rough and wet ride the worst thing we would have faced. If the hull had been sound the boat would have been more than adequate for the trip.
I wouldn't change a thing about that part of my life. But I certainly wouldn't repeat a lot of the "adventures" a second time, knowing what I do now.