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So I'm out at Hartwell over the weekend having a good time. It's 2PM Sunday so I had to go a bit further north than typical to score some good water. We turned a corner or two in some tight channels and wound up in a pretty big area of glass. It was my turn up so I dropped in and we started up. I'm cutting out for a jump when all of a sudden my boat stops.
The crew said something but I couldn't hear them. When I saw them break out the oars, I assumed the engine died. I pulled off my board to swim back to the boat and when I did I realized I was standing on a tree limb! There was a frickin forest worth of unmarked submerged trees right under the boat. What's really odd is that there are docks all around this veritable forest. I guess the trees a problem now because the lake is so low but it's not that low. I've seen it a lot worse. My crew was smartly using the oars to keep the hull from hitting any more limbs. I slowly pulled the boat out of danger using the tow rope.
Luckily, the hull only suffered a few surface scratches but the prop lost a good chunk out of it. It wasn't bad enough that we couldn't get back to the ramp but it was bad enough that I'm sending the prop off to get repaired.
I'm really proud of my boat crew for knowing what to do and stopping the engine immedeately after contact. The situation could've been a lot worse than it ended up being. I'd also like to give a big middle finger to whoever is in charge of marking submerged trees. If they can't be bothered to place a marker, then they could at least mark the maps. It's not like those trees are new or anything. Then again, I'm just glad I'm not having to read up on fiberglass repair right now.
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