The earliest family vacations that I remember while living in Montana were at Flathead Lake. We would go with serval other families that owned boats, and we enjoyed all kinds of water sports during the week of camping. This lake was known for three things. First, for the great recreation on the lake, secondly for the ginormous ‘fish’ that washed up on shore many years ago called ‘The Flathead Monster’, and third, for the saw mill that was located on the lake, where logs escaped from all the time, and floated around the lake.
As young kids, one of our favorite things to do was to find some of those loose logs and float for hours on end on those logs. We would look for logs that looked like alligators in the water, name the logs things like Ali and Croc, and float all over the water, as long as we were in eyesight of our campground. We preferred floating on logs rather that swimming, so that we were ‘safe’ from the other ‘Flathead Monsters’ that we were sure still lived at the bottom of the lake.
One of our trips, everyone was out on the lake enjoying a beautiful day. While most everyone was in one of the boats skiing, fishing or just enjoying the ride, my friend and I were floating out on our logs, ‘Ali’ and ‘Croc’, right near our camping spot. Most of the parents were talented skiers. Shore starts and stops were no big deal for them, and they were really entertaining to watch as they sprayed all kinds of water everywhere they went, called roster tails.
The man that owned the ski boat was skiing behind his boat. My friend’s dad was driving the boat while her older brother and my older sister were riding in the boat. The boat came in to drop off the skier right in front of our camp. My friend and I were floating on logs, and the driver of the boat had to turn the circle a little tighter that he had hoped. There seemed to be a little bit of a lack of communication between the skier and the driver. As the boat slowed down, the skier began to sink. Instead of letting go of the tow rope, the skier decided to hang on, and let the boat pull him back out of the water. There were problems with this scenario… The boat was an older boat and did not have a ski rope hook located in the center of the back of the boat. When this happens, you can buy a pully system to keep the weight distributed as the skier goes from side to side that helps distribute the weight being pulled from the back of the boat. The owner of the boat, (the skier), instead of using a pully system, had tied off the tow rope to one side of the boat. No one really saw a problem with this, until the ‘perfect storm’ occurred. The driver turned sharp and slowed down to avoid hitting another ‘John boat’ and two little girls floating on logs. The other issue was the way the tow rope was connected to the boat. As the boat turned to drop off the skier, and the skier decided not to let go of the two rope as he sank in the water… in front of all of us, the boat suddenly flipped over! The boat owner saw bodies flying everywhere as his boat turned upside down and began to sink. My sister had been sitting on the back of the chair in the boat with her feet in the chair; as the boat flipped, the opposite side of the boat hit her in the face as she was knock under water. All of us sat stunned as we saw the engine sinking and the front of the boat floating upside down in the water. We could hear voices inside the upside down boat. My friend’s brother was yelling ‘I can’t swim’ while his dad was trying to calm him down. After what seemed an eternity, we finally saw my friend’s brother and dad pop out from under the boat, where they had been trapped in a water pocket. Her brother had a lifejacket on, but as he was paddling around in the dark, he couldn’t swim under water to get out of air pocket of the sinking boat they were trapped in. My friend’s dad was able to push him under water and help him get out of what seemed to be a death trap. Everyone was safe, although my sister had a broken nose, and my friend’s dad needed several stitches in his head where his sunglasses had broken and cut open his head. Because the boat accident was so close to shore, I remember all the parents diving under the boat and they got most of the things that had been stored in the boat. It was shallow enough where this took place, that we could see the boat under water. This made it easier for them to recoup the sunken boat.
Although the stitches and broken nose hurt, and the boat owner had to get his boat out from under water, the whole thing could have been so much worse. There was no more skiing that trip, but we still enjoyed the water and floating around on those silly logs that in our opinion looked like alligators.
Although the boat owner had a lot of water and mud damage to the engine of his boat, and two people were injured, all of us felt that the Lord was watching over us. It’s so nice to have that security in our Father when things go wrong, that He will take care of us.
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalms 46:1
