When the Motor Comes Off Your Boat

Alamoosook Lake, mid-August sunset

It was a long, lazy summer afternoon in the town of East Orland, Maine, population 1,825. I was on the shore of Alamoosook Lake, looking out at the water, and all its possibilities glimmered like light on the backs of a school of fish. Without a doubt, it was the hottest week in the state that summer, late July, with trees so green they looked yellow. I was to embark on a motorboat ride with my cousin Colin, three years my junior, into those aforementioned hopes. My grandfather had just acquired a new Evinrude 500 motor that was clasped onto the back of the little tin boat, ("as tinny as a tin can" he used to say) and everything seemed alright. He wasn’t around that afternoon, so without too much supervision my cousin and I proceeded to paddle the boat out, from the shore to just off of it, to a place deep enough to start the motor. It was passed the reeds and patch of cat tails. The waves were tiny, delicately lapping the sides of the boat, and so we had nothing to fear. I was positioned in the boat facing backwards, with the blue hills at a distance, and my grandparent's little white house still just a quarter-mile away. My cousin had control of the engine. We were smiling as the sun reflected off the dark blue water and into our eyes; and being teenagers, it marked a preliminary time when we we could call our own shots.

            Colin started the motor. He did this by pulling back on the gas string like you’d do a lawnmower. We had enough gas, it was visible by the red plastic tank that looked like a big ice cooler. With the third pull, the engine caught petroleum and started propelling everything. Our boat jerked violently forward, being made of scrappy aluminum. Sun rays beat directly down on us, from our heads to our un-shoed feet. As seagulls dashing across an ocean sky, we were moving.

            Cruising on a lake out in the country is a feeling like no other. Limitless, expanded, blown by wind, the body feels free of all concerns and commerce. It’s the excitement of tomorrow, the beauty of yesterday, meeting together at once. We didn’t care about school or our sports teams; we ate the wind.

            Lost in the moment, I realized what a perfect day it was. Then without warning, the engine dismantled and flung itself off the boat and into the air. I was looking straight at the engine when the two knobs holding it onto the back edge of the boat failed to keep in there, and the mass of the engine lunged backwards; it was trailing behind us now, almost in the water, as our tin-can-of-a-boat slowed in momentum.

            The engine hit the surface of the water like a sack of potatoes. Stunned, Colin and I were momentarily frozen, not sure of what to do.

            “Grab the rope!” one of us yelled to the other, out of our element. A mere two cables had attached the engine, one being a twine rope and the other a thin gas tube made of rubber. The motor was sinking into the inky void of the lake’s waters. Fast. To counter the sinking of the motor, I was pulling its attached rope in with all my strength. I kept yanking on the rope. To my dismay, the rope suddenly untied itself from the engine’s handle, and I found myself holding the end of the rope, but it was just that; to my horror: no engine was on it anymore.

            “Good grief,” I thought, face strewn with anxiety.

“It’s still attached by the gas pipe!” Colin said. Meanwhile, the motor, which grandpa had just sunk $700 of his social security into, was continuing to descend deeper and deeper into the water. I grabbed the gas pipe, but gingerly, knowing if I pulled too hard I’d have broken the connection between it and the Evinrude. As water began filling the inside of the engine, I negotiated with the gravity of the lakebed and finally got the engine within reach. I lunged over the boat’s edge and into the water, arms outstretched as I reached for and then embraced the bulk of the engine. Pulling back, I heaved the motor over the boat’s back side and dropped it at our feet. 

            My cousin and I made eye contact, quizzically, dizzy from what confusion had just erupted. How had the motor dismantled itself from the back end of our pleasure-craft, leaping madly into the air behind us?

            Looking at the water around us, with one hand above my eyes to block the summer sun, I waved down another motorboat as we stood in ours, much relieved but still filled with residual bafflement. The rescue boat was filled with people older than us, must have been in their mid 30’s or something. They taxied us in, back to the shore. When we arrived back to my grandparent’s house, Grandpa lumbered out to our boat as if nothing had gone wrong. He was an old train conductor who had worked on the railroads for fifty years. Without hesitation, he made quick work of repairing the situation. He reversed the engine and yanked on the string. It spewed all the water inside the contraption, out and onto the beach. The water dissipated through the grains of sand like the vanishing days of summer.

            “Hey Grandpa, how in the world did the motor fly off the motorboat?” either Colin or I asked him.

            “The screws weren’t tight enough.” he answered, and then without a word lumbered back to his workshop in the garage.