A Night on the Lake with Captain Dave

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. 

This is our third stop of the shift, each getting more intense the later the hours creep towards the Fourth of July.  With days of rain followed by a miserable heat, every boat owner on the lake, it seems, is out tonight, and few of them seem to have any idea what they’re doing.  Dave suspected Captain Doofus was drinking, watching him as he searched for his license and boating education certificate.  “Have you been drinking tonight?” Dave asks.

 “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.

“And you thought we chased loons,” Dave says as we speed towards Gilford.  It’s close to 2 AM, and Dave’s given out six tickets, more than thirty warnings and enough safety tips for every boat owner in New England. I suspect it’ll take all summer to get to everyone, but he’s up to the challenge.