What happens when ten adults take out two pontoon boats further loaded with many children into the middle of Smith Mountain Lake on a sunny summer day in Virginia?
Before I answer that question let me tell you this: pontoon boats are fun. We are looking around here to see where we might rent one ourselves in the near future. Also fun? Family. Lots and lots of cousins are fun. Lots of food eaten on a boat in the middle of the lake is also fun.
The cousins kids, all eleven of them, if I’m counting right and including my own, were fun. Tiny versions of the monsters we all grow up to be ourselves, and isn’t it funny to watch once we realize that?
So the family reunion was good. Sitting up late and talking around a campfire, eating good food, singing with the guitars and listening to my sweetheart play and sing is always fun. Actually, the best I found was when he and the boy were playing and singing together, the keyboard and guitar and their voices blending nicely on Mad World, a song which isn’t really what you’d think of when you imagine sitting around the campfire singing songs.
But back to the boats. Two pontoon boats, loaded with kids and adults and coolers of food and drink, motoring out onto the lake on a sunny, summer day in June. The day was gorgeous and as the two boats raced each other down the main stretch of the lake, I spent some time imagining living in one of the enormous lakeside homes, complete with a dock and a sundeck, a speed boat, a Sea Do, and a kayak, for my many varied moods. I lived pretty happily in that world for about twenty minutes or so.
The boats pulled into a cove with no other traffic already anchored into it, and we puttered around a little, trying to get a good position between us so we could swim and hang out. Three or four of the kids got into the water to swim. One of the cousins, who had ahold of her baby, swam for a few minutes. We ate hotdogs and basked in the sunshine. I couldn’t wait to get into the water.
Then –
Raindrops. Big ones.
We all looked up, puzzled, at the sky. Clouds were rolling in, what appeared to be tanker truck-like clouds, filled in with gray but light around the edges. Oh, well, a little rain won’t hurt. It blew in fast enough; it will blow back out soon, too.
Everyone back on the boats and get under the canvas on the end.
At which point, the heavens erupted. The sky blackened. The wind tore through the cove and our boats were lambasted from side to side. Kids shrieked, the cousins shouted to each other, all of us huddled under the paltry canvases stretched over one end of the pontoons.
The rain hardened.
Winds blew rain onto us in sheets. We couldn’t see across the cove. The drivers of the two pontoon boats separated and made for docks, ours tying up at a single-family dock that appeared deserted that day. We all climbed out of the boat, onto the dock, huddling in the minimal shelter offered there beneath the eaves and watched the storm rage and calm. We stood there for thirty to forty minutes before the lake flattened out again, the raindrops turned from needles to harmless drips, and the wind gentled its lashing.
Back in the boat, each of us soaked to the skin whether we’d been swimming previously or not, we saw our second boat looking for us. We tied up together again, laughing in that relieved way that all our children were fine, that we’d survived the sudden hurricane-type weather. I’m not mentioning names here, but apparently one of the cousins (the driver of the other boat) in trying to tie up to shore during the worst of it, had panicked and instructed his sister to swim the anchor to shore to tie it up. Obviously, she did not. But she did laugh about him thinking she could have.
We floated there for a few minutes and discussed staying to swim now that we were all wet anyway and the storm was over anyway, but some of the smaller children (and a couple more shaken adults) had other ideas about that. So we headed back up the lake. And it was good that we did because that storm was rolling up the lake behind us, chasing the boat almost. We’d get out from under it and then there’d be a few more raindrops, warning us to keep it moving.
With the boats returned and unloaded of all kids and coolers and towels and stuff, I stood on the docks with Candy (the one who refused to attempt to swim with the anchor to ensure the safety of her family, the slacker….) and she shook her head at me, eyes wide with wonder. “They said only a twenty percent chance of storms today,” she told me and I giggled.
Two rented pontoon boats, eleven kids, nine adults, two coolers, many lifejackets, thirty minutes of fun and forty-five minutes of terror. Just so you know, a twenty percent chance of storms is no joke in the middle of a lake! But it sure was an experience.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
found your site on del.icio.us today and really liked it.. i bookmarked it and will be back to check it out some more later
hilarious!
Pretty nice post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed browsing your blog posts. In any case I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you write again soon!
Great post Beki! Thats what I mean, you never can tell, its soo difficult to predict when looking at the hour by hour and it being 40% and nothing happens, and then twenty percent that happens to you, this will probably make me more parnoid next time i need to check the forecast. I need to check your sight more often, saw a book i would like to read that you recently read, “Dismantled”, ill be checking that out. Thanks for sending me here!!