[Photo by Yurii-Khimanin-on-Unsplash]

While living in Kentucky, we had several friends with boats.  After enjoying theirs on several occasions, my wife started to warm up to the idea of having one of our own.  We discussed budgets and types of boats for several months.  Finally, one day my wife said, go and get a bass boat for yourself that you can learn with and maybe we’ll get something bigger later.

I know all the jokes about the best day of a man’s life associated with boats.  I will tell you that for the three years I had my fish and ski bass boat, I loved it.  It was a great boat that gave me minimal issues to deal with. I thought it would be all about the fishing for me, but I learned over time that I just absolutely loved being on the water and having such a fun toy to do it with was an incredible bonus. 

I’d just had it a few weeks and was still trying to use it every weekend before winter came.  It was a nice fall Sunday in October when I asked a couple of buddies (Mike and Mike) to go out that afternoon with me on the Ohio River.  One of them mentioned rain possibilities the day before so, we all watched the weather apps for the next 24 hours. At about 2:00 pm that afternoon, no clouds were in the immediate vicinity and the weather app said only 15% chance of rain.  That seemed reasonable.  I called both Mike’s and said, “only 15% chance!”  So, off we went to the nearby boat ramp.

We’d headed up river for a few miles to find some pools or inlet areas off the river to fish in.  The Ohio is very wide near Owensboro, but it is, for the most part, a calm, steady, and relatively moderate speed river.    We found a little carved out area off the river that we hoped fish might move into to get out of the flow.  We spent about an hour or so working that area with no success and were debating a move when rain clouds blew in out of nowhere from downriver near the ramp. Little sprinkles turned to rain quickly.

We all had some rain gear and hurriedly began putting it on.  In the matter of seconds it took to get the gear out and put it on, we already got pretty wet. Then the downpour started.  It produced, heavy, heavy rain, in sheets, like you see in movies.

We could see the dark clouds coming from the ramp area and watched massive waves forming in the river.  I didn’t know that 6 to 8 foot waves could form in the Ohio.  We argued the merits of staying in the bay, but the rain kept coming and we didn’t know if it would get worse.  The rain came down for another 10 minutes and we decided to make a break for it and head back to the ramp.  I let Mike Hamilton drive as he was a much more experienced boater than I at the time. 

Mike accelerated from the bay towards the river and was trying to weave between waves.  That didn’t work, so he tried hitting the waves at full speed.  That sort of worked, and thankfully, the bilge pump kicked on and worked very well at draining out the water that kept crashing into the boat.  After one particularly large wave hit the boat full on and filled us, Mike looked at me and said, “bass boats aren’t made to handle much more of this.”

Then it stopped.  Even more suddenly than it came, the rain and winds let up. It stunned me how quickly the river settled down and we slowed the boat down and looked at the clouds.  They were heading on up river.  Mike Hamilton looked at us both and said, “only 15%!”

Mike Caldwell responded with “yes, but no one said 100% of the 15% was going to be on me.”

We talked about it a bit and decided to stay and fish.  We’d already survived the bad weather.  We stayed another hour or so (didn’t catch a thing).  We took the boat in and cleaned it up and there was no damage to the boat.  We didn’t get sick or harmed.  Both Mikes fished with me many more times over the next year or so, but poor Mike Hamilton got stuck with me on one or two more downpours (in a lake not a river the second time).

We did get a little jaded about weather reports after that event.  Whenever we checked the weather and someone would say, “only 15% chance of rain”, we’d look at each other and say, “yes, so long as that 15% doesn’t all come down on me.”

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The next story in this series is: Tales from Kentucky #4: Lost Tire Hell

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