Excessive Wash



This is the police log clipping from my one and only brush with the law. The year was 1984. It was my best friend Fred's birthday party and he wanted to get his boat in the water so we could do some water skiing. He had a lot of guests around so I volunteered to take the boat from a ramp in Marblehead harbor over to his parent's dock on the Marblehead side of Salem harbor. A couple of Fred's college buddies volunteered to join me for the trip.



It was a very windy day and there was a small craft warning in effect. The ride around Peaches point that separates the harbors was slow and rough and I was happy to finally reach the protected waters of Salem harbor and open up the throttle a little. Salem harbor at the time was quite open with a free speed channel that ran its length. I unfortunately had entered the harbor too close to the Marblehead side and was outside the channel.



As I entered the harbor I noticed another small unmarked motor boat moving off to my port side. It was accelerating and moving towards me. The the man in the boat was gesturing with his hand but I couldn't imagine he was signaling me so I ignored him and kept on cruising; moving in the direction of the channel. It wasn't until one of Fred's college buddies mentioned the fact that the guy following us had a gun that I decided to stop.



The man with the gun turned out to be an assistant harbor master. I think he was having a bad day because he threatened to arrest me on the spot. He made me follow him to a dock at Pickering Wharf in Salem, where he yelled at me some more and explained the hazards of my wake; his main concern seemed to be that if someone on one of the small boats I passed was deep frying they could have been splashed by oil. I was biting my tongue the whole time, wanting to point out the fact that the wind was doing quite a bit of boat jostling itself. In the end I kept my comments to myself and he just logged the incident and let me go.



It wasn't until a few days later when some police showed up at my parent's house with the court warrant that I even knew I was in trouble. It was my first year at Alpha Software and I was really embarrassed that I had to take the day off and go to court.



On my day in court, my case came late on the docket so I got to watch a lot of shop lifters, drug offenders and drunk drivers get their sentences and fines before me. The judge seemed pretty tough. When my case finally came up I was called to the microphone in the center of the court and the charges were read. I knew things would be all right once I saw the look on the judges face. It was a definite 'what the fuck?' sort of look (if the judge was a dog his head would have tilted). The judge called the prosecutor lady over and they consulted for a few seconds and then the judge looked at me and said, "Twenty five dollars seem ok?", I nodded and that was that.



There are three inaccuracies in the police log. I wasn't the boat owner, the boat belonged to Fred's dad. I also was not 21, I was actually 22 at the time. And finally, the charge I received was not 'creating excessive wake' but instead the more obscure 'creating excessive wash'.

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