Thats the good news. Bad news is I was trying to do 320 miles and 4 states. Worse news is I am waiting for State Farm to call me about my probably totalled Waverunner, and I have to file a report with Texas Parks & Wildlife about the crash. The terrible news is that I hurt a friend. He's OK, just some bruised ribs and lots of black and blue on his chest and leg.
The first 12 hours of our "10" hour trip were amazing. The last 5 contained much suckage. My buddies ski kept having problems and it put us behind schedule. We had to borrow bolts off of mine to repair his carbs which screwed up and kept fouling plugs. Finally we resorted to me towing him about 20 miles to a bridge which was OK until we came to the waterfall which no one knew about. Lots of people have told me about making this trip in bass boats and party barges but its obvious they were full of CRAP because there is no way they could have made it up this waterfall and surely they would have mentioned it if they had seen it. My first attempt (still towing Randy) was not pretty. I picked a likely spot and gassed it. I slammed my way almost to the top and got stuck on the rocks. I pushed off and came down the wf sideways. I untied Randy because I did not want to get tied up in the rope. The river was about 100yds wide and I tried 6 more spots, like a salmon swimmin upstream, until I made it on my 7th try. Took 45 min's to get his boat over. Stashed his boat at the bridge and he rode biatch on mine trying to get to the next bridge, before dark, where the motorhome and trailer was. Getting dark. In the diminished vis, he said something, I turned to answer him, and when I turned back, there was the tree. We hit it at 52 mph. Hit so hard it knocked my shoes off! I landed on my back and skipped like a rock but he slammed into the water on his side. It knocked the wind out of him so when he popped up he couldn't talk. I kept swimming to him and asking if he was ok but he couldn't answer. Scared the crap out of me. I got to him and saw he was concious but hurt. We were still in the strong current and had to work hard to get to the shallows. The tether switch killed the motor when I came off but at 52 mph the boat went a long ways upriver. We waited for it to float back down and I gathered all our stuff. Never found my shoes. The hull is ripped open but its still floating. We had gone about 10 miles and thought it was another 10 to the next bridge. Wrong. Turns out is was another 34 miles. Did this in the dark holding a Qbeam with 2 people on a boat that was full of water. Randy was shivering uncontrollably the whole time. Beached it on sandbars about twenty times and Randy couldn't help pull it off, and I was barefoot. We got off the river about 11:30 pm. Retrieved the skis but too tired to go home or to the hospital. Parked the motorhome at 3am and slept. Got back to town about noon. I unloaded while he showered and went to the hospital. No broken ribs was good news but I still feel terrible about it. He said "sit happens". How was your weekend?

 

Wow quite a weekend!

 

sounds like fun

 

It was quite a day. That was the Readers Digest condensed version too. Didn't even mention how you can use a doorstop to make a cruise control, so you don't have to push the throttle all day. Or changing the battery in knee deep water with a gator nearby. Or the bugs in the beam of the Qbeam getting so thick it looked like a blinding snowstorm and became hard to see trees or the bank. Or getting to one sandbar in the dark and spending over an hour in the dark, barefooted, trying to find deep enough water to get the boat past the 1/2 mile long sandbar, and back into the main channel. I tried hitting various channels at speed to get through, only to get stuck and then drag the ski back to where we started from. I finally made one last effort with only me on the ski to cross the sandbar, going wide open so as to be able to run in the shallowest water. When I made it I continued on until I was sure I was in water deep enough for two, and then stopped. Randy had to walk the 1/2 mile in the dark with me guiding him by the Qbeam and voice. Pitch black, no moon that night. If I had not made it that try, we would have slept right there because we didn't have the energy to pull it back if we got stuck. At some bridges we had to unload the fourwheeler and put the gas cans on it to cut thru the woods to get to the river. At some the banks were too high to stop there so we would go upstream, find a place, and walk back to the highway and get the fourwheeler.
I just talked to a boat shop and they think they can fix the Waverunner. I'm dropping it off in the morning.
The bruises are still there but the soreness is gone and we are already planning the next trip. We are going to put into the Sabine River in Longview Texas and go to the Gulf of Mexico. Two waterfalls and a dam to contend with on this trip, but at least its downriver. We're thinking about May. Heck, if we make it to Port Orange Texas early, we may even take a right and go to Galveston Island to look at the bikinis.