TLDR on the bottom
So, I have a small jon boat that I don’t use that often but I purchased years ago for fishing rivers and small waters. Brought it up to a buddy’s cabin to try on his river.
Well, I’m a total wuss when it comes to driving a boat on a river so I was pretty nervous that I would wreck my prop, run a ground, flip it on a dead head, you know, your typical river disaster.
No, that would be too obvious. Too easy. I don’t roll that way.
Well, I ran over three miles as the crow flies up the river (my buddy says probably eight river miles), really without much of a hitch. Bumped a log or something in an area I slowed down in but that was it.
I was pretty pleased with how far I got so I stopped and figured I would fish my way back. I make my way to the front of the boat; I have a bow mount trolling motor on this rig. There was a little water in the boat from when I launched it and when moving forward, it ran up to the front of the boat with me.
Well, I notice some green algae looking stuff in the water, I think to myself, that’s weird, I don’t remember seeing any algae in the boat at all before, maybe it was under the bench seats and the water washed it up…but no…hey…that’s not algae, that’s 2-CYCLE OIL…oh CRAP!!!
I look in the back of the boat to see my quart of oil completely upside down with the cap off…son of a…I jump to grab it and too late, it is completely empty…oh NO…this didn’t really happen…this couldn’t of happened?
Of course I’m rocking the boat like a mad man splashing all of the oily water to and fro, back and forth, doing a great job of lubing up the entire thing. Now slipping and sliding all over as I try to get everything off the bottom of the boat. My brand new fishing backpack tackle box. My boat tie downs, my life jacket, anchor rope, rods…in the process I’m sliding around trying to keep from doing the splits in my Crocs (they are awfully slippery when lubed up). All the while, knocking things back into the slimy mess I created only to spread the oil all over.
It’s hard to describe the horror that is when you recreate the wreck of the Exxon Valdez in your little aluminium jon boat but trust me, never again will I ever put a bottle of 2 cycle oil within 50 feet of that damn boat and if someone unwittingly walks by my boat with one, well, I feel really bad for that poor SOB.
So, at this point any hope of wetting a line was gone and I had to try to figure out a way of cleaning this thing out in the water because launching the boat into the river was no easy task since we slid it in on 2x12s from the shortest mud bank we could find. I won’t go into detail on that but it basically involved a few buckets of oil dry and a half a day of hell. Thankfully I had plenty alcohol. And after all of that, it still took me several hours at home to get it into decent shape to put it away.
Never again, PLEASE lord, never again!
TLDR
Dumped a quart of oil in the bottom of my jon boat, horror ensues.
Toss a bit of sand in the bottom the first time it goes out again, it will help with any missed spots traction wise.
