www.iFourWinns.com

Some of you I have spoke to yesterday and today. For the others I will let everyone know my stupid act for the year hopefully. I think most have seen the news articles. The pictures are true and awful. I hope this is a lesson learned for everyone that reads this. I know it was for me living it.

Yesterday I went sturgeon fishing with a good friend of mine up the river about 10 miles from Astoria. We have noticed the hole on several trips up and down the river and really wanted to try it out. My boat is a (or should I say was) a 2006 Riviera flybridge. I bought it new and had many problems with it (mostly with the generator) but finally had them all fixed and really enjoyed using the boat. I just had a bunch of work done to it and of course serviced and ready for the season along with some new rigging. Anyway we anchored and put the lines in the water. I did a few things around and was getting some stuff in order and read for a bit and then was really bored (mistake number 1). Ever since last year I make it a habit to wear a life vest all the time even in the river as it is not friendly. And of course the boat is full of safety equipment. Jack had fished with me for many years. I met him in Alaska in 1979. Great guy to fish with. I decided to purchase a couple of those new Solaris flares as some of mine were due to expire in July of this year so I figured it made sense to have the best ones. I thought it would be fun to show them off to Jack (mistake number 2). So I grabbed one and showed it to him. He asked how do you set it off. I said I had no clue as I had never had to or set off any flares but had the gun style on the boat too. About that time I started to look it over and took off the bottom part to expose the trigger (or what I guess is the trigger) (another mistake). From there things went so fast I really can not remember what happened as it seemed like my mind was swimming. All I know is that we were standing in the cockpit and when the flare went off it shot right into the house. I looked at Jack and he looked at me and we both could not believe what happened and could not understand why I would be so stupid as to release a flare on the boat. After the initial shock I told Jack to go get the rafts and the ditch bag as there was so much smoke in the house I could hardly see but decided to grab a fire extinguisher and try to put out the fire. I have many of them on the boat (5 to be exact) but could only get to one of them as most were in the cabin. While Jack was getting the rafts and ditch bag I tried to put the fire out. What a joke that was. The fire extinguisher was too small and not nearly enough stuff to put out a match book let alone the fire that was started inside. By this time Jack had already started to inflate the rafts (thank god). He inflated two of them. Then by this time I could see it was a loss and decided to get Jack off the boat. I got him in a raft and made sure he was free from the boat and then I took the other raft and the ditch bag and fell into the raft myself. At the same time I did that the fire had spread to the cockpit and just a few seconds later there was an explosion (maybe the fire extinguisher) and the fire took off and totally engulfed the boat. I could not believe it.

We floated down the river for what seemed like days (probably about an hour) before a couple boats showed up but did not see us even though I was waving red and greed flags and we were in yellow rafts. I was able to talk to the Astoria Coast Guard from after getting into the raft. There is more to this story but probably boring from here on out.

Lessons learned for me was amazing how fast a boat will burn. Had I not made the decision to have Jack get the rafts right out of the gate we would have had to get into the river with only our life vests on and that would not have been good. I think it is very important to think about saving your life first and worry about the material things later. I wanted to grab some items out of the boat but could not breathe while in there with the extinguisher so just figured everything in the boat could be replaced. And there was a lot of stuff.

I spoke to Rod today and he is so correct when he says how important it is to have the correct safety gear.

At this point I will probably continue to go fishing but will not use or touch the flares again. I will leave that up to someone that hopefully is better than me. I can do just fine with the rafts and radio and other safety items. I hope everyone can learn from my terrible experience. It was very hard for me to tell everyone about this accident as it was about as stupid as they get.

Wayne