Common Misconceptions
About Big Boats

   Common misconceptions about big boats: They can go anyplace, anytime. This weird ‘thing’ seems to argue that big boats are easy to drive, because of their motors, and can bust through any wave on the Colorado River with an easy, stupid-minded aplomb.

   False. They ain’t easy to maneuver. For starters, they’re huge. Except in Grand Canyon rapids, where they get very small, like everything gets in a Grand Canyon rapid, a place where small boats become absolutely tiny. No. Big boats get pushed around by waves just like any boat gets pushed around by waves. The bigger the wave, the bigger the push. Big boats frequently get pushed someplace they don’t want to get pushed. They surf, just like little boats.

   Horn Creek Rapid is a fine place for surfing big boats when the Colorado is low. In low water the run is on the left, after entering from the right, and requires a tight move while sliding down a smooth, quick slick of fastwater, past a pourover, and ahead of a mammoth lateral which awaits at the end of the slick. In a big boat it is a tight squeak between them. It is a move you’ve got to make. Slipping downstream and hitting the lateral will shoot you, at warp speed, into a round black rock, huge and very hard, the Bowling Ball, which is, oddly, on the right side of the river at the bottom of the drop.

   Short story: I know a guy. Been driving big boats for 10 years, minimum; well over 100 trips. One of the best on the river. A respected gentleman who is married, does not smoke or drink, and, rarely swears. Outside of running the hole at Granite Park a couple of times many trips back when, he never had a problem; he has hardly ever dinged a prop. This guy is good.

   One day, he did not make the cut at Horn Creek. It was the same day a helicopter and fixed wing airplane collided below the South Rim on the Tonto Platform, but that is another story... Anyway, that same day he didn’t make the cut. He, and his big boat, were dispatched post haste into the Bowling Ball... BOOMMM!!! AND...the front of the boat was damaged beyond recognition. That is a tough act to follow in a rubber boat. A miracle: Nobody lost any arms or legs or feet or anything. There were other problems on that trip. Someone, a woman I think, was evacuated for a bleeding ulcer;

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