Common Misconceptions About Big Boats

somebody else hiked out Havasu Canyon and called the shop to let us know a boat was coming in ahead of schedule because it didn’t have a snout anymore. When the frame finally made it back to town and was got off what remained of the rubber it took 8 people 10 hours to repair. We tinkered and clanked loud, all eight of us, knee deep in hamburger wrappers and welding torches and sledge hammers and rivet guns, long into the night on that one. And, because it was so badly damaged, we shipped the rubber off to Maryland, which cost $1000 in express freight charges.

   Common misconceptions about big boats: There is not much finesse involved in driving ‘those things’; nearly anybody can do it, and without much practice.

   Wrong. Way wrong. The best training somebody can get to be a ‘motor pilot’ is to be a paddle captain in a tiny boat on a small river. Same-same. A big boat is paddleboat, too, but with a different configuration; not to mention, again, that it is huge and, for that reason, won’t fit a whole lot of places tiny boats fit. This ignores the fact that, IF you started-out much enthralled with the notion of becoming a big boat pilot, you should have many, many trips before being given command of such a beast. They are unruly creatures. There are some things a big boat won’t do. A big boat has a big mind of its own. Period.

   Short story, my own: I had been ‘on the river’ for years, mostly small California rivers in oar and paddle boats. I came to work in Grand Canyon after a Utah love affair fell apart and I needed another river to work. I worked hard in Grand Canyon and, after 6 trips (we are talking ‘good old days’ here, folks), was awarded my own command, my own manifest of 20 passengers.

   Stupid me. The first thing I did was rip my 30 horsepower Mariner engine in half on a rock at Badger Creek, Grand Canyon’s first rapid, 8 miles downstream from Lees Ferry, the put-in. After that I had my spare engine (and that alone, thanks), and, 272 miles to go. I was new to engines; I did not know much about them. That is a harsh reminder right off the get-go.

   I had a good run through Hance that trip, although it was raining so hard I couldn’t see the bottom of the rapid when I entered up top. I had to run Hance in the first place because the rain was so extreme that rocks were falling out of Grand Canyon’s black sky; boulders were falling into the river all around us, sounding like cannonballs when they struck the water. To park next to a wall and wait it out would have meant death for everyone aboard. That is why I ran Hance that way that day.

   Next, after a passenger exchange at Phantom Ranch and an introductory lunch for the tinhorns below Monument Creek, I parked in Slate Creek Eddy.

   This is still, easily, the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me on the Colorado. Condensed short story: I hit Crystal’s top lateral, what people call ‘the feeder wave’—I hit it, that was my first mistake—with a slight in-stream ferry angle—my last mistake—and...ZOOM! I was parked in Slate Creek Eddy. I remember turning and bending and loading the engine’s reverse lock mechanism and giving her all the gas I could, and I am not kidding when I say that 5-second span of physical action took more than one hundred infinities to live through. We slid into that place with a thunderous crash of spring-loaded rubber (having pumped the boats at lunch) AND SLAMMED LIKE A BIG DOG...BA-WHAMMM! There followed a tremendous, continuing, shudder through all quarters rent by rock walls, severe hydraulic turbulence and screaming passengers. And, then, we began to wrap Slate Creek Corner. I called “High Side!” and everyone, each of them, all twenty, jumped-to immediately. When the boat stopped rising up the wall and made itself fast at 45 degrees to the wall—God, it was not stable at all; it was shaking and moaning and twisting all up like mad; my only engine was getting thrashed—I screamed for everyone to get off. That took about 3 seconds and qualifies still as a bona fide, historic, mass exodus...and, they all got off in the same place, straight off the bow, because that was the only place to go.

   During that long afternoon all of us worked hard at getting the boat stable and pulled up into the eddy and laid flat on the water. And we waited for the water to drop. We waited there in the hot sun for hours. We waited and waited and waited. And, we waited...

   In the middle of dinner, an entirely abbreviated edition of hamburgers, hotdogs, buns, many fancy trimmings, fresh cucumber salad, coffee, cobbler and all that, served at the confluence of Slate Creek and the Colorado River, river mile 98, Grand Canyon National Park, Az, the water started to go. We banked the fires and loaded the boat. We loaded the boat—and it took forever. More slow-motion photography. Later, suddenly, somehow: we were all aboard and I was speaking. I thanked everyone for their patience, understanding and labor. I told them it was harder for me to get on the boat than it was for them; I said I was more terrified then they could ever be. I told them we still (humor, please...) had to get past Slate Creek corner but that we could easily end-up in the same circumstance we’d been in all afternoon—and—possibly worse: we had a sure chance of flipping. Did they all understand? They did. I called quarters and fired-up the engine. We got high in that little tiny eddy, and with a ferry angle only the Almighty could have lent. The river swelled. I goosed the engine. Away we went, smooth as silk, the best left-side run I ever had at Crystal, the only left side run I ever had at Crystal.

   Camp was at Tuna Creek, shortly downstream, where I consumed an entire bottle of whiskey all by myself. I also decided to serve breakfast at 3AM. Camp the next night was at Olo Canyon where a still-terrorized passenger shit in the handwash bucket, completely unaware of the nearby toilet. Lava went fine; the water was so low it could only take the boat on one run, and did. A couple of days later I ran out of gas on Lake Mead. This small enterprise required a 6-mile hike-swim-hike-swim-hike in the middle of a mid-summer Mojave desert bright-sun afternoon to Scorpion Island, arriving long after sunset, for reinforcements. All told, it is not much to think about.

   Common misconceptions about big boats: They’re not easy to flip; flips are a result of pilot stupidity.

   I have never flipped a big boat. Not yet. That is what I tell people, if they ask. I tell them, also, that there are two kinds of pilots, those who have and those who will. It does not matter how very smart you are just now, or will ever be.

   I say that I have picked-up the pieces a couple of times after a big boat has flipped. I say that. With winches and pulleys and miles of static line I have picked-up the pieces. I have done that.

   Crystal, for instance. Crystal is famous, infamous, even. Crystal flips all kinds of boats. I have seen plenty of small boats in trouble there. Usually they get sucked down the middle, through a mammoth hole or two, and flush out upside-down before getting funneled left of the island. Swimmers end-up on the island, and have to swim some more. Swimmers off big boats tend to be all over the place, but not until the end of the rapid.

   Believe it or not. People survive flips. Nearly always people survive flips. I know of 15 or 16 big rigs that have gone over. In all that mess—mess, that is the correct word—two pilots and only one passenger died. There are always, and to be sure, broken bones and missing teeth and shattered dreams, but, not dead passengers.

   Megapicture: Ugly to horrible, depending. Depending on how you visualize a 37' x 14' x 3 ton raft after it has gone through a bigtime grinder. Try this: a twisted mass of steel and aluminum and contorted rubber wrapped around itself all twisted out of proportion and cut up. That is what you should be seeing. Everything that remains on the boat is hanging upside down, floating in the water nearby...spooky, real spooky. When walking around on its upturned hull the boat seems much smaller than it does right-side-up, loaded with 20 chattering passengers. The big boat now looks like a little teeny tiny boat, comparatively. There is gasoline running out of its tanks into the river, and you see this rainbow chemistry trailing into the main current.

   Here is how it is. Immediately it is you upside down, underwater, unable to breath, trapped in what you think is your pilot’s compartment. You hear the hard scrape of submerged boulders as they destroy the metal boxes in front of you; the rocks are coming your way. Suddenly there is a body on top of yours, suffocating you more, hiding the daylight; she is somehow tangled with you, her hand is ripping at your face, your eyes...there is NO AIR...the rocks are coming, the rocks...

   How is it that, later, you find yourself sprawled on a beach, shivering-coughing, your shirt gone, your leg cut and bleeding, an ugly red bruise hung off your elbow?

   One more: He is a large man, 250 pounds trim running weight, bare bones and all. He is stout: the tiller has broken off in his hand; the engine’s driveshaft housing has smacked a submerged rock and gone bust. Completely. The impact has not budged him an inch. He is at the helm, in big trouble, and sees what comes next: Big Red, the biggest rock in Crystal. Sideways. At 28,000 cfs. There is a mammoth ‘rooster tail’ flushing wild into the air off Big Red; deadly rainbows cloud the sky. He knows, during that space-time-warp-vacuum, what any pilot sees and thinks and feels when he realizes he’s going down. He knows: I will hit it. And he hopes: Maybe I will wash over.

   He does not. CRASH!! The big boat bounces hard, then rushes the rock again fast...BOOM!!! On impact, the boat’s upstream tube gets sucked underwater. The boat rolls over, which takes about five seconds, max. Presto—and—goodbye.

   WHEN it is turning over, the large man, El Pilote Grande, tries to exit out the back. The raft comes down on him, pushing him underwater where his face hits something hard. Brief synopsis: 1-each broken ear drum, 1st-2nd-3rd molars (right side), shattered—and I mean shattered—Zygomatic bone and Maxilla (as above), (much later...) a swift ride in a white gurney on a cement floor with four Meds all over you right now; many sharp and severe nightmares which will visit, occasionally, for the remainder of your life.

   Meanwhile, back at Crystal...

   Enter O’Steen, crewmember. Second Year. He is tall, trim, healthy. O’Steen cuts a steely-eyed, confident figure wherever he goes; mostly it is the strut of his chin and cool humor that do it. When the boat hits Big Red, O’Steen falls off his seat near the pilot and onto Big Red.

   (We are not talking tiny, small, or, even, infinitesimal; we are talking...microcosmic.)

   O’Steen: I was standing there. The boat backed-up and came in again, real fast. Blew me backwards, but I was still on my feet—hey, I ain’t goin’ anyplace. The whole thing started to rise; it started to ride-up the rock. There was a terrible noise, lots of wind, metal scraping... It still had air in it...... It rose; it rose up, it kept rising. It was going over... Unbelievable...

   ...then he describes the raft sideways in the air in front of him. Him standing on Big Red, about to be washed away. The raft is raining people. They are screaming; when they hit the water they quit screaming, for they need air. The raft comes down in a tornado’s WHOOSH!! with a tremendous WHAMMMM!!! People are screaming; they are all screaming. They are clutching for air and screaming. O’Steen is there, right in front of this—at arm’s length—and can’t do one thing to stop it.

   The overturned raft settles briefly in front of Big Red, right up against it. The rooster tail dies; O’Steen is safe on the rock. People start popping up near the boat. He sees a young boy trapped in the pilot’s compartment. They reach for each other...O’Steen is talking to the boy, pleading, his arm extended. The raft moves, the boy disappears... O’Steen swims, picking up pieces as he goes. He does not see the boy until later, at Tuna Creek, when the helicopters come.

Shane Murphy