The demise of my camera

Here is the photos my camera takes now. It had a little accident. It was on board the SS Minnow when it came within inches of sinking Saturday during the fishing tournament.

It was about 10:30 am. Dan and I had been in the boat since 7:00 am. We were fishing hard. But the fishing had been really slow. We only had three fish between us. The winds were howling at 20 to 30 miles an hour (we thought the Minnow would be lost). I still had a sweatshirt on because it seemed chilly out on the lake in the wind. All of a sudden I looked down in the boat and there were several inches of water on top of the carpet. I said "where's all the water coming from"? I guess that wasn't the smartest thing I could have said. But it didn't register right away. Then I looked to the back of the boat and there was about two inches, tops, of freeboard. I then added "We're sinking. The freak'n boat is sinking"!!

We assumed the plug had come out (at least we hoped that was it...anything else would have been much more disastrous). Dan ask if I had another plug and I flung open the "dry" storage where the spare plug was located and saw that that compartment was full of water also. As a matter of fact, I saw my roll of toilet paper float by as I was digging out the new plug. I found the plug and then plunged half my body overboard to put the plug in the hole. And yes, when I got down there and felt the hole it was empty.

I got the plug in but it's one of those plugs that you screw in and as you screw it in, it expands and fits snuggly in the hole. Well I couldn't get it to snug in there from my position in the boat. So we decided to go over to a dock and in Dan's words "one of us can get in (the lake) and tighten it". Funny how he said "one of us" but it sounded more like "you". He later explained he figured I was already wet anyway. My sweatshirt is now a 300 pound body suit.

On the way to the dock we almost broke the trolling motor but recovered from that. By this time we had the bilge pump running but had to stand on the opposite side of the boat from where the bilge hole was so the water would pump out. Otherwise the bilge hole was underwater.

I really didn't want to get in the lake. So we weighed our options (after breaking a solar light off one of the dock posts) and we decided the only logical thing to do is to go back to the landing, load the boat on the trailer, drain all the water out and put the plug in proper.

So we did that. It was a slow ride back to the landing because the boat was so full of water I couldn't get it up on plane. The back end was very close to going completely under when we tried to go to fast.

Unfortunately my camera was in with my toilet paper.

We did get back out fishing and ended up finishing not last, but second to last.

Being the only woman in an all male bass club you can imagine the guff I got. One smart ass wanted to know if I put a tampon in it. I advised him not to pull my string.