Rip Tide

Dutchman's oldest brother does quite well financially.  Early on in life he developed some sort of small electrical generator now quite popular with third world nations.  And success brings money and what are you going to spend your money on when you are a graduate student?  Yup, a boat.

Now Dutchman and I love to fish, so when brother headed back home, we hitched up the boat and hauled it out to Westpost, on the Washington coast.  It was salmon season, we had an available boat, so why not????? :)

We drove forever to get to the coast and the boat launched!  Loaded up the boat, stored everything and motored out of the harbor.  The flat calmness of the harbor was replaced by the rhythmical rise and fall of the boast crossing the rollers as we headed out to sea.  Once free of the traffic around the breakwater and harbor entrance, Dutchman opened that little engine up!  We were screaming across the rollers!  I was guessing we were doing about 60!

And suddenly, we were airborne!  The engine wound up!  You could hear the propeller singing as it self destructed!  Dutchman slammed the throttle all of the way back, shifted into neutral.  Everything right, there was just no time to accomplish the task before this brand new boat had destroyed itself!

We hit the water and took a heck of a jolt!  While Dutchman was trying to figure out where we were, I popped open the engine compartment and the engine was seized.  Luckily there were no leaks!  When I popped my head back up, a heavy fog had appeared from nowhere and there was utter silence.

Between Dutchman and I, we figured our run time at 23 minutes out of the harbor.  Using the fishing pole, I had us in 180 feet of water and west by northwest of Westport.  Dutchman called us in to the Coastguard.

And for the next five hours we drifted.  I fashioned a sea anchor and this snapped our bow into the waves, so  a little more stable.  But, we had no idea where we were drifting to ... spun as we were in a rip-tide.

In the same way as Dutchman and I found ourselves at the mercy of a rip tide current of the sea, we are all in Western Culture at the mercy of the currents which surround us, bouncing us from side to side, at times tossing us up or threatening to drown us, pulling and dragging us to where we oft least times wish to go.  And those currents are rather easy to identify ...

Immorality
Is rampant in this culture!
Sexuality - of any description, anytime, anywhere, by any means!
Sex is just a physical act, it has no meaning!
Marriage has no meaning!
Family has no meaning!
Life is about me and my pleasure alone!

Financial
We are under slavery to credit institutions.
We are bound by corrupt laws they rule us by.
When is that last time you got a credit application?
If not ten in the same day!
How many years are you in debt for?

Political
In the midst of the most appalling presidental cycle in US history -
do I really need to spell this one out?!?!?!
We have gone so far astray that we are now faced with candidate with NO character!
No standards or behavior exist.
The more outrageous, the better!

Liberalism
Most do not believe there is an absolute.
Most do not preach the truth.
Most do not want to listen.

We are not safe.
Our children are not safe.
Our families are not safe.

What has happened!?!

There is a standard, God's Way.
There is a path to failure the, World's Way.

Only through repentance can God's Way be found.
Only through repentance can the World's Way be avoided.
Only through repentance can any of us have any hope ...


As it turned out, a sheer pin had failed in the outdrive of the boat's drive train.  And someone confessed to having taken the boat out the day before us and hitting a log at high speed.  So, the pin failed on us, which flipped the boat up in the air, the engine over rev'ed and then seized!  Whew!  At least we did not do it!  There was no way Dutchman and I could have afforded the $10,000 repair costs back in 1974!