Thank you for the compliments, I believe all of you would have done the same. Thank you to Bob Mathers (Blue Oval) for the initial contact with Jason Johnson about this story. Lawrence called me right after getting my phone number from Jason, it was a good talk and he is very grateful. The entire tow we only used hand signals due to my boats open exhaust and Lawrence was busy monitoring the bilge, so his call was a very welcomed closure.
When we are serving as marshal boat, we have our lifelines vests on and engines idling in preparation in the case someone should need our assistance anticipating every second may count, and this time it did. Fortunately Lawrence's crew member had a line already looped thru their boats bow eyelet as we approached and I knew they needed a tow, however as I backed up to their bow, their line was a 15 footer, so Debi thru me another 15ft line, I wanted a longer line but no time to spare, I tied the quickest knots I've ever tied and immediately started to pull slowly increasing as they provided hand signals. Then Debi called 9-1-1 to report to USCG and I started analyzing the situation. After her 10 minute 9-1-1 call ended, I called for USCG assistance on my Icom hand held VHF as I wanted a source of immediate communication to the USCG and the response was immediate. Then thinking of what could go wrong, I partially raised the engine hatch for additional heat escape, Debi asked why, I told her if we loose power, we could loose both boats in 150 ft of water & miles from shore. Her response was "untie the line if we loose power", I said "those knots are way too tight now", she said "then cut the line", I said "we have nothing on the boat to cut that line if it starts to go down", you can imagine the resulting responses. I now have the shears on the boat that I just used this week to cut the line off my stern eyelet. Once the Coast Guard assistance arrived, even thou I was still towing, I was so much relieved. Once we were escorted thru the Charlevoix piers, round lake, and into shallower waters on lake Charlevoix the USCG flawlessly took over towing Lawrence's boat into Irish Marine.
Thank you to the USCG Charlevoix, Charlevoix Sheriff's, and Michigan DNR for their assistance.
Lesson learned, if things were to go really really bad, you may need a way to cut a line.
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