It’s close to 1 AM in the early hours of the Fourth of July,
and there’s a man with curly hair sitting a few feet away from me trying to
touch his fingers to his nose with his eyes closed, his head tilted back. A Marine Patrol officer stands in front of
him, watching every tiny move the man makes as our boat rocks back and
forth. A steady stream of boaters races
past us out of Weirs Bay, their wakes pushing our boat from side to side. I’m seated behind the boat’s windshield, and
with our engine idling and the roar of other boats, I can’t hear anything the
two men are talking about, but it doesn’t look good.
About
ten minutes ago, this gentleman came within three feet of changing all of our
lives for the worse. Only my captain’s
quick thinking saved both our boats and all the passengers from a fate too grim
to contemplate. My captain is Officer
Dave Jones of the New Hampshire State Marine Patrol, and if he hadn’t slammed
our boat into reverse, this captain, Captain Doofus, would have crashed into
our steel hull, the three children in his bow would have catapulted off into
the murky night, and he’d be sitting in the Laconia lockup, wondering which
night was Pepper Steak night and who his roommate would be for the next eleven
years.
“I’m
the designated driver tonight,” Captain Doofus responds, avoiding eye contact
and busying himself with a pile of papers in his lap.
“I
didn’t ask you if you were the designated driver. I asked you if you’d been drinking,” says Dave
in a less than tolerant voice. It’s
taken the entire shift – since 5 PM – for Dave to express anything other than
patient explanation, but considering what almost just happened, he’s clearly
annoyed.
“Yes. I had one beer,” the curly-haired Captain replies,
but Dave’s not buying it. Within moments,
Dave has the man on our boat taking a series of dexterity and memory tests. Our new guest passes by the thinnest of
margins, avoiding hand cuffs, a tow to the station for the breathalyzer, and an
awkward call home for a 1 AM ride home while explaining to his kids that “Daddy
will be fine” as Gammy rings the family attorney.
Dave
hands Captain Doofus a ticket for his lousy driving (“150 Foot Safe Passage
Violation” for $84.32) and tells him he barely passed the sobriety tests,
instructing him to anchor his boat for an hour and sit tight before heading
home. “That guy came very close to
ruining his life,” Dave says as we motor away into the humid night.
It’s
been an eye-opening evening. I met Dave
earlier at the Marine Patrol’s headquarters on Lake Winnipesaukee in
Gilford. Dave’s been a seasonal office
for the Marine Patrol for the past six years, working as a cop in Alton when
he’s not on the lake. Minutes into the
patrol, it’s clear Dave is the Navigating Savant of the Lake. Winnipesaukee boasts 274 islands, and Dave
knows them all. I point to one after
another, and their names roll off his tongue faster than our twin engines spins
their props – Pig, Bear, Rattlesnake, Eagle, Mink, Nine Acre, Six Acre, not to
mention Jolly, Dollar, Dow, Diamond, Long Pine, Little Mud, Big Beaver and Far
Ozone, to name a fraction.
The
lake is enormous, the second largest behind Moosehead in Maine (not including
Lake Champlain, bigger than both combined).
By foot, you could walk 182 miles around the entire lake, through eight
towns and two counties. By boat, the
longest stretch is from Center Harbor to Alton Bay, over twenty five miles long. Dave’s the lone Marine Patrol officer on the
lake tonight, the first at the start of a long holiday weekend.
Dave
wastes no time pointing out what boaters are doing wrong. Just past Spindle Point he spots a jet ski
jumping the wake of the Mount Washington
as it heads near Three Mile Island. The Mt. Washington’s the biggest boat on the
lake, its wake is an attractive challenge.
“If he does it one more time, I’ll stop him,” but the jet skier heads
off in another direction as the massive boat slips behind the island in the descending
dusk.
As we
cruise along, Dave provides a rundown on the basics of boating safety, from
life preservers to proof of boating education, a horn that toots, lots of life
preservers, a fire extinguisher, three working lights (red, green and white), and
a blue registration sticker, among others.
He shows me pages of rules and regulations, from lists of no wake zones
to hull numbers, rafting rules, rope types, PFD variations and even what a
Wisconsin driver’s license looks like.
During
our first stop, a young captain can’t find his boating education certification. Dave pulls out his binder, showing him what’s
acceptable, explaining, “You have to make sure the people delivering the course
are licensed by the state.” The captain
seems crestfallen at the apparent realization that the weekend class he took in
the basement of Burger King in Tilton wasn’t legit. Dave hands him a gold slip of paper with
instructions on how to prove, within two days, that the Fryolater
Technician/Boating King license he earned last year will pass muster.
We zoom
past Governor’s Island and its stately manors, the island’s residents waving to
us from lofty gilded perches, their ascots blowing in the breeze. “Huzzah to you, loyal civil servants! Huzzah to you!” Just then a call comes in from Dispatch about
water skiers and a man in a hang glider in Moultonborough “harassing
loons.” Dave takes a deep breath as we
make our way to investigate. “We need to
get to Alton before the fireworks start,” he say concerned, “And it’s a long
ride.” Dave opens up the throttle, and
we race across the lake’s slate blue surface.
Of all the things Dave wants to be doing right now, I think mediating a
man-on-loon altercation is not high on his list, but duty calls.
We
arrive in Hermit’s Cove, and Dave interviews the neighbors. They point us towards a house with three
boats and a hang glider tucked on the shore.
We approach as two men, drinks in hand, engage Dave, the smells of
barbecuing chicken and smug second home ownership in the air. “I’ve been here
for twenty five years – I know enough to stay away from the loons,” the obvious
culprit says, his smile a mix of endangered bird resentment and hang gliding
exhaustion as we pull away and make haste for Alton.
We
enter Alton Bay at dusk, more than 200 boats already anchored for the
fireworks. With their lights on, the
boats fill the bay like swirling green, red and white Christmas lights. “This is going to be nuts once the fireworks
end – everyone tries to race out of here.
Do you get seasick?” Dave asks.
After friendly reminders to every other boat we encounter, (“Turn your
lights on. Slow it down. You’re too close. Those underwater blue lights are illegal . .
.”), fireworks explode overhead, blooming circles of color casting shadows on
the lake’s dark surface. Dave takes no
joy in our nation’s birthday celebration.
“That guy needs a higher light in the stern, and that one’s going way
too fast!” he says. Every boater, Dave intimates,
is doing something wrong. “If I stopped
every single one of the boats I worried about in this harbor, we’d miss something
more serious somewhere else.”
We hustle
to Weirs Bay, where hundreds of boats wait for the midnight fireworks. We loop around to the east, and Dave spots a
boat with no lights. Two men are sitting
in the boat, and after much discussion about a missing light and a broken horn,
Dave asks the captain to come aboard, the empty beer bottles, the half-filled
bottle of wine, and the odor of booze clear signs to investigate. The guy’s just under the legal limit, and
with a busted light, no horn and a belly full of beer, Mr. .07 BAC can’t drive
home. We hook up a tow line and take
them into Weirs Beach. As Dave untethers
them, he admonished the captain, “This is your lucky night. Get your boat fixed and never do this again.”
Does
anyone, except Dave, have a remote clue about the rules of the lake? Expired registrations, missing licenses, busted
horns, no life preservers, hang-gliding aristocrats dive-bombing defenseless
waterfowl! This is the Lake of No Rules,
except that there are rules and Dave’s the only one out here enforcing them.
Once
the sun goes down, it’s impossible to discern land from water. “To work nights, you have to pass a test with
no navigation aids. I need to know where
every light is, where every buoy sits and every island.” Over the course of the
night, Dave points out the exact location of each light we pass – even in the
pitch black, he knows right where they are.
“Light 36 is off to our right – at 2 o’clock – wait for the two flashing
lights. And in about twenty seconds, to
our left, Light 27 will blink once, just off that point . . . there,” and a white light flashes to my left,
on cue. There are eighty four lights,
and Dave’s got them memorized.
Just
before quitting time, Dave approaches a speed boat. The captain’s from Medford, Massachusetts,
and he’s a mess. No license, no boater
certification, PFDs stowed away out of reach and list of other things Dave can
only shake his head at. “I swear I have
all this stuff at home – you can follow us.” the Medford Mensa offers, but Dave
declines, handing him a summons and a boating safety pamphlet instead. “This is your Happy Fourth of July Get Out of
Jail Free night. I just saved you $400,”
adding, “Now get home and be smarter next time.” The Mensa smiles a big vacant “Thank
You!” as we separate.
