Not Big Muddy, Big Dummy

Now, I don’t claim to write like Samuel Clemens, but we do have a few similarities.  Sam wrote about the Mississippi River, which he called Big Muddy; while I write about the Appomattox River, and call myself Big Dummy.  See how close those terms are?  Just a mild transposition of a few letters, and there you go, the 21^st Century Mark Twain clogging up the river.

It’s interesting to note how much time Clemens put into learning the river, and the ways in which the current would change, and the channel would sweep from one side to the other.  He explained how sand bars would appear then mysteriously disappear, seemingly overnight.  And how he would listen for the person calling off the water depth, they would yell, 'mark twain' and follow that with the number of fathoms of water the ship was floating in.

And maybe that’s where I ultimately went wrong?  Fathoms are a measurement equal to six feet, so two fathoms is 12 feet.  Whereas, two feet is 24 inches, and one foot is a mere 12 inches, and three inches is a stuck boat.

Knowing where you are in the shoals that make up the confluence of the Appomattox River and its main tributary, Swift Creek, can make all the difference. Oh, and another good thing to keep in mind is that thing called a tide chart.

Misquoting that famous line from the Humphrey Bogart movie, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, all I can say is “Tide Chart?  We don’t need no stinking Tide chart!”

Yeah, right!

I think, as readers, you’re starting to get the drift (pun intended) of where this column is headed.  For what it’s worth, we probably would have been OK, except that there are no road signs in the middle of the river, and the river is very unforgiving when you miss a turn.

Truth is, we had to go out when the tide was relatively low, because we wanted to go fishing.  My brother had come in for the day from North Carolina, and we had all these great plans on stalking rock fish. I already knew they were in the river, having seen pictorial proof of the piscatorial demons. In other words, my friend’s sons had already caught a couple.

But, tides wait for no man; and, seemingly, no man can control time off.  You play when the games afoot, which we believed it was that sunny, but cool and windy Sunday morning. We did not go in the river where I would typically go in the Appomattox due to vehicular obstructions at the private ramp.

Instead, we opted for White Bank.  We had two chances there to out-think Mother nature (see, use common sense), first there was only one truck and boat trailer parked in the lot, and second there was a kayaker who told us that the water up stream was getting a bit shallow.  He also said we should be alright heading down stream.

So, we knew the tide was going out, but we didn’t realize what the ramifications of “tide going out” meant in Swift Creek.  We forged ahead with our plans since this is the only time we had to go in the water anyway.

Off we went, with one hand on the tiller and one eye on the depth finder.  For a long time, it showed a generous four feet, would that it were four fathoms.  As we got closer to the confluence with the Appomattox River, however, it started to fluctuate a bit, sometimes ranging as low as two feet and we had an occasional bump and flurry of muddy wake, warning us of impending doom which we dutifully ignored.

We drove on oblivious, our silvery Moby Dick calling us farther and farther away from the boat ramp, safety, and comfort.  We made it to the spot that should have been our saving grace, where Swift Creek actually crosses the Appomattox River.  To be honest, it looks like a huge roundabout, and there’s a bit of a tuft of tree branch sitting up in the middle like a traffic light.  At this point, had we only made a left turn everything would have been fine and we would have been in the Appomattox River channel and good to go for the rest of the day.

But the river channel looked more like a small bay, and the water in front of us was wide and open and very inviting.  We plowed onward, feeling our way along the edge of Cat Island, while the keel was bumping and grinding over submerged sand bars and suddenly, the depth gauge was reading in decimal points.

We eventually had to pull the motor up, and a little bit later, even the trolling motor was grounding out.  Then the breeze sort of pushed us into a huge sand bar that appeared in the middle of the river where no sand had appeared before.

Feeling we might be in trouble, I made a phone call to a friend with a boat who said he would be happy to help out, but had to wait a couple hours for the tide to come in.  Knowing that we were safe, although hung up, we opted to see if any said fish were lurking about.  But even fish won’t swim in three-inches of water.