The marina where Dad kept both the African Queen and his next, unnamed boat, which we called, simply, the Trojan, was run like a comedy of errors. I could tell you many stories about that place.
The man who operated it always carried a pistol in a holster on his belt. I guess he was afraid one of his customers would try to kill him one day. His fear was probably justified.
One day I pulled up to the gas pump in the 28 foot Trojan. The gas pump guy passed me the pump handle and I began fueling the boat. Now, the hose on the gas pump was not one continuous hose. It was two hoses joined by a coupling. Suddenly the two hoses came apart. The coupling had broken. Gas was gushing into the bilge at a rate, it seemed to me, of several gallons per second.
One might assume that gas pumps would be designed with a back-pressure sensor, so that if the hose broke the pump would shut off. But one would be wrong.
“Uh, hey, HEY, *HEY*...” the power of speech momentarily left me as I saw this incredibly dangerous situation unfolding. The gas pump guy finally saw what had happened and shut off the pump.
I switched on the bilge fans and pulled open the engine hatches. I was going nowhere in the next few hours.
# # #
Late one night, Dad and I went to the marina. We planned a trip down river the next morning and we had some work to do on the boat. We were working on it late at night, using a flashlight, when a man on the boat next to ours came over and asked us if we were taking flash pictures.
Uh, no. No flash pictures. Just doing a little work here. See... here’s our flashlight. The man grunts and returns to his boat. Dad and I think this is pretty weird, but we continue working on the boat. Ten minutes later the guy comes back. Now he wants to buy the pictures he thinks we’re taking.
Look guy... flashlight, see?... no camera, no pictures, just a flashlight... We finally convince him and he returns to his boat. Dad and I figure he’s got somebody’s wife on his boat and he thinks we’re taking pictures as evidence. We put away the flashlight and put away the tools. No point in getting shot by somebody who won’t even remember it in the morning.
# # #
It’s late at night and Dad and I are getting the boat ready to go down river in the morning when I notice a noise that sounds like a motor running far away, and I also become aware that I’ve been hearing it for a long time. “What’s that noise?” I say to Dad. He doesn’t know, but he becomes curious, too. We walk up the pier, up to the parking lot. The noise is louder. We continue walking until we reach the end of the parking lot. Here is the source of the noise. A drunk is passed out in a car with the engine running. His foot has the gas pedal pressed to the floor, and the engine is running wide open. A radiator hose has burst and engine coolant is all over the ground. The entire exhaust system is so hot it’s glowing red. Literally, the ground beneath his car is lit up red from the exhaust pipes. The car is locked, so we knock on his side window and he manages to rouse himself awake. We motion for him to cut off the engine, and somehow he figures out what we want, and he kills the engine. Then he passes out again.
We think, wow! Good thing we were here. We return to the boat. A few minutes later, I am incredulous to hear his car start up and see it leave the marina.
The next day I was told that his coolant-less car was able to go about a mile before its over-heated engine seized up. When the car’s engine died, the car was only a few yards away from entering a busy highway.
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