Shipwrecked in Montana

Shipwrecked In Montana

Cowboy and I have a date every Friday night, usually to dine at some Montana bar and grill, but last week he said, “We’ve been buried with work this week. Let’s catch up with the grandkids and meet them at the Bighorn Canyon National Park. The Far West has been unused since last summer, so it’ll be a fun trip.” The Far West is our 40-year-old, put-put-powered boat and the Cowboy and I are both over 80 years old, so every journey could be our last, but we are always looking for adventure. He continued, “The Bighorn Canyon was created by the Bighorn River and straddles the Wyoming/Montana border. It will knock your socks off and be a welcome change of pace. What do you say? We can launch on the middle of the canyon, cruise up to their campground, meet the kids for a picnic, spend the night, and come back on Saturday or Sunday. We can take the little guys for a boat ride, too. They’ll love it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. Little did I know what the change of pace would be.

We are always busy, but things had piled up, and we had even missed two St. Louis Cardinals’ games. Something had to give. A two-day boat ride on the Far West seemed like just the ticket. Cody, the wonder dog, knew something was up and didn’t want to be left behind. He didn’t know where we were going or he might have balked. He is a terrier, not any kind of a water/raft/boat/yacht/float dog, so we knew he would quiver all the way down the river and pout when we returned. He unknowingly jumped into Big Red, just the same. For a dog, lack of knowledge can be a wonderful thing.

We woke up to a day of sunshine, blue Montana sky, and a little breeze. A perfect day for a boat ride. Bighorn Canyon sits about two hours south, so we left at 10:00, thinking we would arrive at 1:00, after a quick stop for lunch.

A few more clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped a few degrees, but it was nothing to worry about. We had sweatshirts and never-been-used rain jackets We launched. It was about two o’clock. Launching is the hardest thing for me, I’m a good swimmer, but always afraid I will be dragged in. The wind had picked up and water in the reservoir had begun bouncing a little, but we got ‘er done. I poured myself a congratulatory glass of wine and Cowboy uncapped a Heineken Zero. On our way. Cody just glared at us, like he’d been tricked again. I gave him a dog treat to appease him.

The Canyon and the Bighorn River are sights to behold, beautiful in every one of the upstream twists of ten miles. Walls straight up and down to the water with no shore, limestone meeting the water, creating overwhelmingly beautiful rock formations that resemble Roman statues. Its deep crevices could have swallowed our truck, and a palette of colors shifted from gray to pink to orange to yellow as we put-putted down the canyon. Birds, too, flew into tiny holes in the side of the canyon. A few fish. We had seen a herd Bighorn sheep earlier, but I was on the lookout anyway. We needed to motor the ten miles upstream, just across the border in Wyoming, to meet the grandkids. We were bringing the s’mores and brats, and couldn’t be late. At five MPH, we would be there in plenty of time.

The wind picked up and it began to rain. The sky above us took on a greenish tone, and the rain came, just a few sprinkles at first, but that didn’t last long and a true Montana rainstorm took over. Wind and rain tormented our boat. We put on sweatshirts and rain jackets. Cody gave out low growls because this was not what he had in mind.

All of a sudden, Cowboy said, “We gotta beach, at that spot. There. He pointed at a small sand spit next to a 1000 ft vertical cliff. You take the helm; I need to check something.” I moved to the captain’s chair. I’m a novice ship’s captain, but managed to steer clear of the rain-obscured rock formations and beached the boat. Cowboy moved to the bow and tossed our brand-new anchor into the shore to hold us. He yelled, “We’re taking on water and we gotta beach the boat.” The spot he pointed to was a favorable wall where the near hurricane-force wind lessened. Did I tell you the wind was blowing harder all the time?

Cowboy started opening various doors to the engine that sits below the deck and said, “The bilge. The bilge pump isn’t pumping.” He stepped down into the engine room, met by four inches of water above the floor, which meant another eight inches or so below.

I yelled, “Holy shit, we’re gonna sink.”

Cody growled louder and snaked down under a beach towel, with only his eyes peering out.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Cowboy said. “Your job is to make sure we don’t float down the river, so watch where we are, let me know if the boat comes off the beach. We need to stay right here, in this mini-cove, out of the current.”

“Oh great.” I became the anchor person. I looked at our river map and on the back side, in bold, red letters: NO CELL SERVICE IN THE CANYON. I checked. It was accurate, my phone had zero bars. It also said, “Don’t walk out of the canyon, a patrol will find you on the river.” I remember a National Park Service boat covered with cobwebs tied to the dock at our launch site. Well, shit, that search is not going to happen.

This old Montana boat could be like the ghost ships, forever haunting the Bighorn Canyon, attacking those West Coast tourist rafts from hidden side canyons, “Ahoy, give us all your treasures or we will take your wenches and sell them to the sugar beet farmers in Lovell.” My delirium was working overtime.

The rain let up a bit, enough for Cowboy to work on the bilge while the wind held steady accelerating through the canyon at 35 knots, which is about 40 MPH, to you landlubbers. He pulled out two of his six tool boxes, all bigger than Cody and started rifling through them, trying to find his 5/16th wrench to take off the hose clamps. Every other size was there, but, of course, the 5/16th was absent. He picked and sorted, and finally, the good old 5/16th appeared. Whew. Meanwhile, the boat shifted, dragged, and we were headed back toward the middle of the river and more wind. I hollered, “We are moving. We gotta move the anchor.”

Pulling the anchor involves climbing to the bow over the cabin, not an easy task, especially when the wind is raging hard enough to blow you off the bow. It’s not on my list of “I can do this, don’t worry,” so all anchoring fell to him. I thought of the old sea shanty: Wey, Hey, Blow the Man Down.

Cowboy climbed over the cabin to the bow to pull in the dragging anchor. He had to adjust it twice more before this saga ended, but never mind that.

Back to the bilge. He figured out what had happened: one of the hoses from the water-cooling system had somehow sprung a leak, so he could fix how the water got in. I have learned that cowboys can fix anything. The bigger problem was how to pump the water out of the Far West. Cowboy couldn’t reach the bilge pump, which sat two feet below the water level in the engine bay.

As the boat pivoted against the anchor and the wind of the canyon, he managed to use the engine-driven water pump and hooked and unhooked hoses, juggling this and that and suddenly, voila, the water began to pump overboard into the river, where it should be. He now could see why the bilge pump didn’t do its job. A hose had worked its way off the pump. Fixable. He again emptied the tool box and found what he needed, and said, “It’s fixed, let’s give it a try.” He stowed all the tools and cranked up the engine and prepared to pull up the anchor. I sat in the helmsman’s spot and prepared to take over as the anchor was released.

Meanwhile, the wind shot up to 90 Knots (I’m probably exaggerating, but forget that) and it started to rain again, not a sprinkle, a downpour. We headed upstream toward Wyoming and the grandkids. We finally spotted the dock through the driving rain and waves. Cowboy docked the boat, secured it with lines and fenders in the strong wind and pouring rain. “I’m going to find the grandkids. Do you want to go with me?”

“Are you kidding?” I used the sh-word for the third time in as many hours. Off Cowboy and Cody went in search of a campfire and people we loved.

Cowboy returned with Cody in about half an hour. “They aren’t there,” he commented. He was drenched, without a spare pair of shoes or pants, but didn’t complain. He loves adventure.

By then, it was 8:00 p.m. “I’m hungry, so let’s cook hamburgers on the grill.” Uh, oh, no propane. No problem, we can cook them on the stove in the galley. Uh, oh, no propane.

I said, “How about hardboiled eggs? I brought a bunch and they’ll be good. We can spice them up with salt and pepper. Gourmet hard-boiled eggs, you can’t beat it. How about some veggies? I brought a raw veggie tray and fresh fruit tray.” It was a yummy Friday night dinner, our Friday night date!

The boat was as sound as it could be. The bilge pump worked and the hose was fixed. We had full tummies and went to bed. All was well.

We climbed into our bunks, snug as a bug in a rug, with the sound of rain and with the wind and waves rocking the boat, listening to the banging against the dock fenders all night.

The rain continued and wind picked up again and the boat rocked and rolled and banged and boomed all night. Cody barked a few times, but he snuggled up to each of us in turn. Under my three blankets I dreamed of being a pirate, complete with eye patch and peg leg, on the Far West Ghost Ship, raiding the sunburned tourists. “Avast you landlubbers. Arrr.”

Cowboy checked the bilge about a dozen times, and everything worked. I woke up at 4:00. The sky had lightened and I could hear the bilge working. It was still raining hard, but the wind had almost died down. The temperature had dropped to 40 degrees, cold, but the heater and the head both worked.

In the pouring rain, Cowboy cranked up the old engine and we headed back downstream to the launch site of Big Red, ten miles though the Bighorn Canyon, feasting on left-over hard-boiled eggs and celery sticks. After about eight miles, the rain stopped and a blue-bird sky appeared, the canyon walls glowed with golden sunshine on the wet rock and suddenly all the drama faded as we chugged along at five MPH in awe of God’s handwork on a calm beautiful Montana morning.

All’s well that ends well, a memorable Friday Night Date and we didn’t sink. Arrr!