Don't You Hate It When......

You go to sleep with your boat anchored in 6ft of water and wake up to this. A great way to ruin a vacation in a hurry. No it wasn't our boat. We all know better. The location is crescent bar on the columbia river in washington state. We see this every weekend. I find it almost as funny as the dam operators who drop the river 15ft overnight. Most people here party til they pass out so when they wake up and can't figure out how their boat got where it did, its good stuff.

i dont find that really funny

Yep, I've helped slide a boat (bayliner) back into the water off that beach at the camp ground. It happened all inside of 10-15 minutes at about 10am. The boat went from being beached to sitting almost completely on sand. We were standing there the whole time...but it wasn't our boat and we weren't going to untie it and slide it in. As your standing there, you keep thinking to yourself, ah..the water will stop going down.. I think the guy stopped and went to his camp site to get his family, when he came back he was stuck.

While this was happening, we had to keep sliding our boat back off the beach.

Oh man. Those are some pretty evil rock piles.

I warn everyone I can about it but some of these people just don't listen. I have also helped move so many beached boats that I have lost count. The only reason that I find it funny is because most of the time these are the same people who are surfing and tubing and power turning in the lagoon(usually the best water)when we are tring to ride. Its like kinda like bad boaters karma to me I guess

(Message edited by otiswunguy on August 21, 2006)

Look at the milfoil in the water. Used to be one of my favorite spots.

there is very little milfoil on the river, just in the cove around crescent bar.

ouch. They don't have signs or anything warning people?

Haha I've actually had that happen to me on that exact stretch of water with my old boat. I was camping at the sand bar across from the Gorge and even made a point to anchor my boat in a couple feet of water overnight. Woke up with a hangover to at least 10 feet of sand behind the boat. Water level lowered 6 feet in about 6 hours because they were filling up the Tri Cities for the hydro races. Learned my lesson the hard way I had to watch the butter for a couple hours while I waiting for enough people to come help me lift the boat back in the water.

I have seen that happen before. You would think there would be a warning that they are dropping the river so much in a short period of time. That boat launch at Crescent Bar I'm sure is out of order with the water being so low. I know last years 4th of July weekend the same thing happened to a ton of people over there.

the launch behind the condos still works but to launch at the marina, you have to have a good 4x4 and some power to pull you out after your trailer axles drop off the end of the concrete. 12 hours after those photos it was up about 14ft more again. That dude got his boat off the rocks and I s*!t you not, he got it beached again the next day just not as bad. Some people never learn.

I would feel badly for the person after the first time, but after it happens again the next day, you start to wonder... haha