Oh Captain, My Captain

I don't if I've ever told the story about how Wife almost electrocuted me. But I was thinking about it this morning as I made my toast in the shower.

Wife & I were once sailors. Not real sailors with tattoos and nautical skills, but fools who lived on a lake and envied the water-privileged. So we bought a boat for $300. Obviously not a huge outlay, but it was a nice little 15' outboard. And because we couldn't afford a boat lift, we just tied it to a crummy little metal dock that came with the house. It wasn't a big lake anyway.

Or so we thought....

Until one day when the Edmund Fitzgerald was tied up and a squall blew in off the lake. It hit the back transom just right to put a bunch of water under the cover and into the back of the boat. This caused it to flounder and sink in about 3 feet of water. Yup, as an intrepid captain with no marine insurance, I somehow managed to sink a boat that I wasn't even on while I was picking up a pizza. That takes skill by Poseidon.

So I called one of my engineer buddies who owned a pump and who I figured would know something useful. Unfortunately, he turned out to be one of those more "theoretical" marine engineers. We wound up sinking the boat again after we had it partially pumped out. We had to use cinder blocks and a big post as a lever to hold the boat up out of the water while water pumped out. We weren't paying attention and let the lever go for a while and the boat settled and sunk again. Yeah, it was probably all the tequila, but when you're shivering on an Autumn night and it's lightning while you're standing in open water, you need a bracer or four.

But on to the near electrocution....

As we first began to set up the pump, I gave Wife the extension cord to plug in. When she came back, she was going to throw the now plugged in cord to me to plug in to the pump. That's right, she was going to throw me a live wire, while I stood waist deep in the water. Luckily I shouted as her to stop (with several profanities) as my buddy attempted to do his best Jesus impersonation. Don't try that at home kids. Wife still claims this was just an oversight on her part. But I always wonder whenever we make waffles in the bathtub.

Luckily there was no Coast Guard hearing as to how I sunk a boat twice while it was tied up to a dock. Man, were we glad when we finally sold that boat--for $300.