"REEL STORIES" continue

Two Noses Missing

When the GNFC was in its infancy, we stayed in Wellesley Island Park cabins and rented boats with 9hp motors. Just the basics, but we did figure out that beer cans worked out better than bottles.

After a typical day of cruising far and wide, the guys gathered back at camp about an hour before dark. After many beers and several counts, sure enough, two noses were unaccounted for. It’s getting dark; we could see lightning flashes in the distant, and no sign of Dave and Frank.

After waiting a sufficient amount of time, the calls went out. The police, the coast guard…..NORAD! And so we waited, and drank. There wasn’t anything else we could think to do. Larry is becoming agitated.

A state police officer showed up and Larry lays into him about what actions are being taken to locate our comrades. The rest of us are cowering in the corners of the cabin certain we are going to jail. I don’t think it helped our cause, that when the officer stepped into the cabin he could plainly see our floor to ceiling wall of beer cases. The officer tells us the Coast Guard, from Alexander Bay to Niagara Falls, are out looking and did we know the names of the bars that Dave and Frank might fancy.

Now it’s 4am and no one has gotten much sleep. I believe the drinking stopped a few hours ago…except Larry. He decides that he will take a boat out to search himself. In the dark? with the tricky rock patches? Are you crazy?

I’m in the bow holding a lantern while Larry steers. It’s not as if you can see rocks from much of a distant - even if it was midday. I could sense pretty much where we were and closed my eyes to visualize the map. We went a pretty fair distance and were on the far side of Eel Bay in the blackness.

Some big monster of the north creeps up behind us. Scared the shit out of me anyway. Up comes a big light into our faces. It’s a coast guard boat.

"you guys loose something " no, we thought we would catch more fish while they slept . "do you want to take these two adventurers with you?" yeah, as long as they are going our way. So we cruise back to camp, as the sun was a rising. It seems their motor conked out and wouldn’t start. They made it to a desolate shoreline, started a fire and finished off the remainder of their beer while jabbering all night. But I’ll leave their side of the story to them.

If only cell phones were invented a couple decades earlier!

Boat Partners that Night/Day,

Wayne & Larry