This is the 2nd of 4 boating stories (as of now)

Boating Incident # 2-

A group of family and friends took a small ski boat out on the Potomac River. We all decided that we needed to learn how to water ski on the river.

After a few hours of feeble (& painful) attempts at water skiing and no one really able to celebrate any good skiing at all, the boat ran out of gas.

Now normally this would not be so bad. However we drifting down a fairly swift river.

With no other boats around, the quiet of the afternoon soon was pierced by two loud noises.

First the thundering of water cascading down an area called The Great Falls.

The second noise was all of us screaming, now totally freaked out and fearing death, or at least a lot of pain if we were to go over the falls.

We eventually regained our calm. We found the emergency paddles in the belly of the vessel and began frantically paddling towards the shore. The combination of prayer and rapid paddling got us to the shore only minutes before we reached the falls.

Even though we were lucky to not go over the falls, the pain was yet to come.

We tied the boat up on some brush and started climbing the river bank. The bank was covered in weeds that were wet with a nasty sap.  Because we were all in our swim trunks, the sap got on our legs and began burning.  Add the burning to the pain from sharp thorns of other brush and we were getting beat up pretty bad. None of us realized what we were into until we were half way up the bank.

Two of us continued up the bank, the other two went back to the boat whimpering all the way.

Regardless of which direction we went, all of us were in serious pain from the burning sap.

This was before cell phones. We walked nearly a mile back to the marina.

We commandeered a small motor boat (full of fuel and a good motor) and took fuel back to the disabled ski boat.

I learned two things from this incident

1 – Make sure the boat is full of fuel and monitor the fuel level

2 – Stay with the boat and beer and send others up the bank to get the fuel.