Yesterday at midnight, I was in the river with the water up to the chest at about 9 ° C, rescuing a riverboat that had the rudder broken. Four hours earlier, I was looking for help and screaming to scare the bears, in the middle of an unknown forest, with an eagle above our heads and no cellular signal in the area.
At 8:00 pm, my friend James and I just made the decision to leave our family by the river in the hope of bringing help. Years ago, James owned a sports hunting company and was working full time, teaching how to hunt elks, deers, and bears ... Yesterday, Sunday, he and I were walking in the same area with nothing more than a few bottles of water, a knife Hunting, and a lighter; In other words, we were the main dish.
It's amazing how the survival instinct activates in seconds, every step and decision you take makes the difference. Around 6:00 p.m., everything was cool, we were resting on a quiet island we had found, but suddenly a black cloud, a thunderbolt on the horizon, and stormy winds surprised us, so we had to stop our relaxation and get into the boat to return home; the rain whispered to us and the boat accelerated.
Twenty minutes later, the boat reached the edge of the storm so we all relaxed again. On the way, we saluted a family who was camping on the shore and we followed our course. At 6:40 p.m., downstream, we were enjoying what was left of the sun when suddenly a blow under the boat shook us all. James immediately checked the rear of the boat, touched his face, kept his cool, and just said that we had to anchor the boat. The rudder of the boat had broken.
At that moment, Luis and Franco understood that the problem was serious; They did not say anything because they did not want to scare the children. A couple of minutes later, Franco noticed that James had no control of the boat. I rushed and yelled frankly at the oars! but nobody understood me. Few seconds after, Franco reacted and told James that Luis and he would paddle from the bow to steer the boat. Luckily, the turbine engine still worked, so we could continue in the same direction and reach the nearest shore, the bad thing is that we were going to the wrong shore; where the water cuts the ground. On this riverbank, there was no way out, but climbing the roots of the trees. Luis grabbed a root with one hand and with the other pulled the boat to stabilize it a little, but the current was strong, and in few seconds it began to spin the boat. Meanwhile, the storm was on us again.
It did not take us long to realize that they had to reach the other end. Luis and Franco had to push the boat off that shore and climb into it in the middle of the river; In less than five minutes they had learned that they had some control with the oars and that they could orient the boat using the engine at the right time to go more or less in the direction we were looking for.
The current carried us downstream as they tried to steer the bow in the right direction. First they tried to turn the boat in an anti-clockwise direction but the river would not let them turn more in that direction, it was there when Franco told Luis: "from the other side", and in a matter of seconds we were pointing in the right direction; on tah moment, I yelled at James now! but he did not listen to me again.
A few seconds passed and Franco yelled the same thing to James, now! On this time, he turned on the engine. Incredibly, we got that almost impossible angle, where the current was pushing, but the motor without direction was balancing the flow power. The boat was moving in a straight line. Luis and Franco jumped to the stern of the boat to raise the bow; finally, we were leaving the center of the river. A smile, sketched on everyone's face for a few seconds until, missing 15 meters to the shore, James screamed, hold on tight! After the blow, I ended up on the floor between everyone's feet, we looked, I stopped, we looked again, we were all well.
Having emerged from immediate danger, James's youngest daughter burst into tears, and his wife began to reproach him for not being careful. Truthfully, we never saw what hit us so I do not blame him. Without missing a minute, and in the midst of the complaints we took things out of the boat and began to build the tent. At that moment, look at the valley and I thought I'll have to spend the night in this place ... if I survive.
While James, Luis and Franco were setting up the tent, they commented on the fact that about 20 minutes earlier, upstream, we had waved on to another group of people in the area, and that would probably be our first choice. Walking up to there would have been four hours considering it was a forest with no other path more than the river.
James, Luis, Franco and I discuss briefly who should stay and who should take care of the children and the women, at the end Luis stayed. Luis and his sister Mabel (wife of James) are black belts in taekwondo, that was at least it is a relief if a human beast approached. The bad thing is that it does not serve much against the bears.
Decision taken, it was a matter of minutes to get ready and go out for help. I shook myself and I was ready, and minutes later James and Franco too. We began to walk upriver. At 600 meters walk, I could see what appeared to be the marks of a van or a quad. I shouted to James and we argued that we could do; If we keep going upriver or if we go into the forest, we decided to go into the forest and follow the tracks for a stretch, how much? We never said how much ... after about 100 meters, forest inside, we arrived at an open field and what were marks became a path, we had found a path in the middle of nowhere. Hidden among the trees. Because of the size of the grass, from other location, we could not have seen the path.
We continue walking and screaming to frighten the bears. Although we were shouting from time to time, an eagle joined us followed us along a stretch. The eagle always brought me a bad spine. The trail took us to the top of a hill from where we had a better view, but without cellular signal yet. There was no human trace other than us and the path. The storm seemed to be glancing at us, but leaving us outside; We were able to see and hear the rays on the horizon. I started to worry.
By now it was 9:00 pm, and it was starting to get dark. We had walked just over an hour and nothing, we followed the ascent and suddenly two new messages in the Franco cell phone! We have signal, Franco called 911 but had no idea where we were. He checked google maps, but it was approximate, we tried to give references to the operator who was helping us, but they all seemed very vague. We had a little relieved commenting we had agreed that Luis would make a huge fire! next to the boat, but it meant waiting for air help upriver.
In the middle of the coordination, I looked out of the corner of my eye at a huge cloud of dust rising above the trees. I warned James and ran to see what it was about; it was heavy machinery that was extracting gravel! I shouting at them until they paid attention to me and I was relieved. Franco told the operator, and she located the place in seconds.
The rescue came for us, the workers of the gravel pit helped us; they went for the rest of our family, and they were surprised that we got cellular signal in that area since they never get signal. I think it was a cloud of the storm that reflected the signal for few moments because, after we finished, we tried again, but we could not talk with 911 anymore until the help arrived.
Already to finish the day, we returned with the vans along the same path and we managed to reach the shore, parked the trailer in the river, we got into the river at midnight, we hooked the boat and returned home at 2 00 am. It was a perfect day for me, I arrived home and I eat my favorite pork-flavored cookies :)
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