If you read Jon Boat Battery: Part 1 or any of the other true stories I’ve posted about our fishing adventures then you already know that if it wasn’t for bad luck we would have no luck at all. I’m not really sure when all this bad luck started, but I’m pretty sure that it was early on in our fishing trips. Here’s a story about one of Chris’s earliest encounters with one of his greatest foes; the jon boat battery.
I’ll never forget the first time we brought out the jon boat. Getting on a boat signaled our first time of doing some “actual” fishing, with the chance to catch a big fish. Up until we started going out on the jon boat we had caught some good-sized fish but nothing compared to being out on a boat. For Chris it also marked the first of many run ins he would have with the infamous jon boat battery.
Just in case you haven’t read Jon Boat Battery: Part 1, let me give you a little bit of background on the battery. It’s a nice Optima Blue Top marine battery with a wrench attached to it. The METAL wrench is conveniently long enough for both ends to touch each post of the battery. To top it all off this wrench is attached with a highly flammable piece of hay string.
We finally got the boat in the water and it was time to hook up the battery. We had never hooked up this battery or used this jon boat before so this was all a new experience. I remember asking Chris a couple of times if he wanted me to hook up the battery, but every time he would say something like “What you don’t trust me Adam?” After a couple of times I just let it go and decided to let him hook up the battery. The main reason why I didn’t trust him hooking up the battery was because he had already asked me a few times what the difference between negative and positive was, and then proceeded to argue with me when I told him which was which. Red and Black were the least of our problems though.
I climb into the front of the boat and turn around to get a good spot for the show which is the battery hook up. Once again he asks and I tell him “Negative first, Positive second, Black first, Red Second.” Ok. What I forgot to tell him though was all that means nothing if when you hook up the negative the positive wire IS IN THE WATER. I didn’t see the wire at first but as soon as I ask he hooks up the negative and it looks like the 4th of July. Sparks shooting up everywhere. I was actually surprised that we didn’t get severely hurt or burned. It probably sparked for a good 30 seconds before he finally unhooked the negative by swatting it off. Looking around after that to make sure that 1. Nothing was on fire and 2. Nobody had seen that.
Once we finally got the battery hooked up and got out on the water needless to say the battery didn’t go to long before it was out of juice. Hmmm I wonder what would make a battery die like that? Best part of this story is that we didn’t have a paddle and had to paddle back WITH OUR HANDS against the wind. We always have a paddle now no matter what. This was the Chris’s first run-in with the battery, but certainly not the last.
