The day a boat blew up at Millerton taught lessons about safety

I was recently thinking about a close call I had at San Luis several years ago when I fell off the dock while stepping into my boat. It brought to mind another experience I had at Millerton with two boaters that taught me a lot of lessons.

I was getting ready to launch my boat when a couple pulling an older model, 17-foot flatbottomed Sanger-type boat pulled up and began backing down the ramp. The man was sitting in the boat and the woman was trying to back it down but it jackknifed every time. I went over to help. Once the boat was finally in the water, the woman told me how excited they were to try it out for the first time in about a half-dozen years. They had just picked it up at the mechanic’s shop.

I turned around to see the boat was sinking – no bilge plug.

I told the woman to quickly back the trailer down while I moved the boat over to the trailer and got it on before it sunk completely. It already had a good foot of water inside when I waded out and took it to the trailer and used the trailer winch to pull it up as far as I could. The back end was going under as I winched the front up as far as I could. Then she slowly pulled the almost completely submerged vessel out a little at a time to let the water run out some, then pull up more. It weighed a ton!

We finally got it out and up on the ramp to let it drain when I smelled gas. That’s when I spotted an old can in the rear of the boat spewing gas from several holes. Yikes!

Once the water had mostly drained and the gas had stopped coming out the holes, I asked about the battery – maybe I could remove it easily and safely. I opened up the rear bunk compartment and saw the battery just a foot from the gas can. Shocked, I saw that the bottom of the lid had a metal sheet that came down on top of the battery posts and that there were huge electrical arc marks indicating previous sparking. Their “mechanic” had created a perfect bomb! I carefully propped the lid up so it didn’t fall down and blow us up and got us all away. Gas was everywhere.

I told them, “Don’t let the lid close and touch the battery!” and I bungeed it open so they could take it home.

I got in my boat and motored out a few yards to watch them leave. The guy got in the truck and pulled up about 20 feet when, to my horror, he jumped out of the truck, ran back to the boat and slammed the lid down.

The sudden flash of fire and the black mushroom cloud that went straight up threw him back uninjured as several nearby bank anglers scrambled to get out some fire extinguishers.

Despite outward appearances, that couple had dodged some deadly bullets! They had no personal flotation devices or a fire extinguisher, so if they had motored out and the gas exploded it would have been terrible. How someone could possibly put a battery in a metal-covered compartment right next to a gas tank is unthinkable. And a long-stored boat needs to have a full check-out before you get to the lake; things deteriorate!

They were incredibly lucky the boat went down and wouldn’t start – it kept them from a terrible accident.

Lessons learned: Be prepared and be proactive.

Never give up!

This story was originally published December 17, 2019 at 12:00 PM with the headline "The day a boat blew up at Millerton taught lessons about safety."