Perhaps celebrated Scottish poet Robert Burns said it best in his poem ‘To a Mouse’ where he declared “The best laid plans of mice and men do often go awry.” I submit that this prophecy especially applies to anything having to do with a boat. I was reminded of this last week when my own best laid boating plans would also unexpectedly go awry.
The plan was to launch my boat, a new 15-foot Boston Whaler Montauk, on Tuesday afternoon, guide it through the back bays of Ocean City, Md., to our backyard, canal-side bulkhead, dock it there, and enjoy my initial flounder fishing foray of the year the following morning.
To that end, on Tuesday afternoon the fine folks at Taylor Marine (where I had purchased and stored the boat) trailered the boat to the public boat ramp in West Ocean City where I met them and enjoyed a problem-free launch. As I pointed the little craft through the harbor and out into the bay it became clear that despite the balmy forecast, small craft advisories were still in play.
I immediately found myself up against a surging, outgoing tide and wind-whipped waves and whitecaps. My main concern was an extremely low tide that could interfere with my attempt to reach our bulkhead as I navigated narrow channels and shifting shoals along the way.
Sure enough, despite my tightly sticking to the channel markers, I still got hung up on a shoal. But fortunately, after tilting the outboard, I managed to steer the boat at a creeping pace to the refuge of our backyard canal where I secured it to our bulkhead, shut down the engine, and turned off the battery.
The next step would be to ride my bike back to the public ramps to retrieve my truck. But then I noticed a humming sound coming from the stern. The bilge pump was running and water was pouring out of the drainage outlet making me wonder how much water I could have taken on in the four-mile cruise from ramp to dock.
But with water relentlessly gushing out it became obvious that seawater must be coursing in just as fast as the bilge could pump it out. There could be only one explanation for this: someone back at Taylor Marine had failed to follow the first rule of seamanship: make sure the plug has been firmly inserted in the drainage outlet. Yep, they had prepped the boat for the coming season except for that one detail and had launched me unplugged.
But before I could return to Taylor’s, explain my dilemma, and seek their assistance, I had to retrieve my truck. With that I saddled up my Cannondale ten-speed and biked the four miles back to the ramps through brutal, punishing headwinds the whole way. Arriving back at the ramps after a torturous half-hour of peddling, I tossed the bike into the truck bed and headed the five miles down Route 50 to Taylor’s where I explained my desperate situation.
“It looks like you forgot to put the plug in,” I lamented.
Their initial response was not what I expected. “We don’t do that,” the gentlemen at the front counter said. “That’s the customer’s job.”
That’s a detail you could have mentioned to me before launching, I thought, and I asked them where I might find the missing plug.
“It should be in one of the cup holders,” they said, “but we’ll give you a couple of other plugs just in case.”
When I asked if I would have to get in the water to insert it, another Taylor employee assured me that I should be able to do that by reaching around behind the boat from the stern and I would find the outlet directly below the outboard.
With that I rushed back to my waterlogged Whaler, found one drainage outlet and attempted to insert the new plugs. Both of them were too small, but then I found the old plug in one of the cup holders and inserted it into the outlet where it fit perfectly.
What a relief! Or not, as the bilge pump just kept on bilging and canal water just kept pulsing in. What I would discover later was that the outlet I had plugged was drainage for the boat’s live well, not the boat itself.
I raced back to Taylor Marine with the bad news and told them I could not find any other drainage outlet beneath the transom. Another employee offered to show me exactly where I could find it as we walked outside to a Montauk 170 model where he pointed to the drainage outlet at the base of the stern.
“Should be right there on your boat too,” he said confidently.
Back at the canal and determined to find the outlet, I stripped down to my shorts, jumped into the armpit high water of the canal, and searched for at least ten minutes for the outlet where it allegedly should have been. Alas, it was nowhere to be found. By then it was after 5 p.m. and the dealership would now be closed. I would spend a sleepless night of worry as the battery drained and the bilge pump wore down. But I could take some solace in knowing the Whaler’s reputation was as the unsinkable legend.
The name of my old boat, by the way, is ‘Open Debate.’ The new boat is ‘Open II Debate,’ and I like to refer to our beach house property as ‘Moot Point’ (notice the theme here?). But given the events of the past 24 hours, I started to think more appropriate names might be ‘Terrible Decision,’ or ‘Tragic Mistake,’ or maybe just ‘Murphy’s Law.’
First thing the next morning found me once again at Taylor Marine to express my building frustration. This time, realizing that I had not launched the boat myself but that one of their guys did, they now took full responsibility and enlisted their chief mechanic to follow me back to our house and finally get a handle on the problem. The mechanic was friendly, efficient, and professional, but the location of the drainage outlet remained enigmatic even to him.
After going online and calling back to the shop, he finally unraveled the puzzling mystery: on this model Boston Whaler, unlike the others, the drainage outlet was inside on the floor of the boat at the back of the stern (I was surprised at how many people at the dealership didn’t seem to know that). But this mechanic finally found it, plugged it, and recharged the battery.
The bilge pump sprang back to life and all the seawater emptied out in a matter of minutes. Then he installed a brand-new battery and, against all odds, I was good to go flounder fishing later that morning after all.
My confidence in Open II Debate restored and with a belated “Thank you” to Taylor Marine, I headed back out into the bay where I drifted for flounder with two top-and-and bottom rigs baited with Gulp Alive Mullet paired with live minnows.
I was fishing a spot called the Thorofare just a few hundred yards from our house. The fact that a dozen other boats were also fishing there told me I was likely in the right place. Right off the bat on the very first drift I hooked up with a flounder that turned out to be just a quarter inch shy of the 16-inch legal limit — but at least I had broken the ice. After that the action shut down.
The weather was sunny and warm but the winds were still high and the whitecapped water was rough and bumpy. The flounder stopped biting and, with my 75-year-old body still feeling pretty beat up from the events of the past day, I gave it just another two hours before motoring back to the dock where I would look forward to better fishing (and boating) days in the long season ahead.
**** NEW JERSEY FLOUNDER SEASON NOW OPEN. Flounder fishermen in Delaware and Maryland enjoy seasons that are open year-round with a four fish daily limit. From Jan. 1-May 31 the minimum size is 16 inches with a daily limit of four fish. From June 1-Dec. 31, the minimum size increases to 17.5 inches.
On the other hand, New Jersey’s summer flounder regulations have a season only open from May 4-Sept. 25 with a minimum size of 18 inches and a daily limit of three fish in most marine waters although there are special regulations for the Delaware Bay and tributaries and Island Beach State Park. No matter where you engage your saltwater tackle, good luck and tight lines.
**** Tom Tatum is the outdoors columnist for the MediaNews Group. You can reach him at tatumt2@yahoo.com.
Source: Berkshire mont