Boating straight into the storm was first mistake

I’m writing between three-foot swells.

I’m bobbing up and down behind the stern of my pontoon boat. The tow rope is wrapped around the prop. I can’t get a grip on it. It’s raining, hard. Lightning. Thunder. Like the Lake Dardanelle version of “The Perfect Storm.” My Australian Shepherd Layla is yipping from the back deck, dog-terror rimming her ice-blue eyes. How’d I get here?

It all started with my neighbor’s island float. You know, one of those 10-foot-long inflatable platforms with a yellow neoprene shade. Strong winds blew that beast off the beach and out into the middle of the lake. My wife was cooking chicken-fried rice and egg rolls when I saw it. Five minutes later, I had the boat out of the dock, the dog by my side, off to save the day.

It wasn’t raining yet. Just windy, like it only ever is over open water. Strong gusts and a 50-horsepower Tohatsu propelled me to the runaway float in record time. No problem. I got the float wedged between the swivel chairs. No worries.

Not until I turned around and saw the storm, coming straight for me.

I went on anyway, straight into it, the first bad decision of the three I’d make that evening. I got maybe a hundred feet, probably less, before the wind blew the float back into the boat’s blue Bimini top, and durn-near knocked me from the helm.

The top was wrecked, the posts bent, the fabric torn. It was really raining now, a cold, hard rain at the end of a hot day. I was OK, though. A little peeved about the busted top, but still, OK.

I was thinking about what my wife would say, the couple hundred bucks my first mistake would cost us, when I tied the tow rope to the float and tossed it overboard.

Bad decision number two. I’d no more than turned the key and spun the wheel before I felt it. I didn’t hear the engine die. The sound of water on water, wave after wave, prevented that. I felt it beneath my bare feet, a death rattle.

I knew what had happened — the same thing I’m always worried about happening anytime we take the kids tubing. I was really fuming now. So much so, I almost just jumped in. That might’ve been the last bad choice I ever made.

Luckily, right before I made bad decision number three, I stopped long enough to put on my lifejacket. And then I jumped in the lake.

The tow rope was wound tighter than I’d expected, coiled around the propeller like a yellow rat snake. Turns out, 5,000 revolutions per minute can do a lot of

damage in just a few seconds.

The adrenaline wore off a couple minutes into unwinding that rope and I realized the sort of mess I’d made. It was full-on storming now. I couldn’t even see the bank, much less the house. I wondered what my wife was thinking. My kids …

I kept loosening the rope between each wave, thinking about how I should’ve never turned back into that headwind. Heck, I should’ve never gotten in the boat, not until after the wind died down. That float would’ve washed up somewhere.

I just kept unwinding that rope from the prop, loop after loop, and eventually, it came free.

Layla was shivering by the time I crawled back in the boat, looking up at me like, “What the heck, Dad!” I shrugged and turned the ignition. I could hear the engine this time, coming back to life.

A few minutes later, the house was in sight. Three stick figures materialized on the back deck. The tallest one wore a pair of binoculars around her neck and a scowl on her face. The two little ones were cheering.

At supper, the Cranors play a game we call “Favorite Things,” which is just like what it sounds. We each tell our favorite thing from that day. My son, all 3 years and 3 feet of him, always goes first. The evening of my failed float rescue was no exception.

With an egg roll in one hand and a fork in the other, my little man declared that watching Daddy be “brave” was his favorite thing.

My wife rolled her eyes. My daughter snorted. I was just happy to be there.