Maritime Heritage Minnesota

[DetectorGuy]

                         THATS RIGHT! WHERE IS IT JOHN!
[/quote]
I was concerned that the adhesive from the number kit would eat into the material of the boat, so I made two aluminum plates and put the license and registration on those. They are attached to the rope at each side of the bow. With the puny 15 HP Evinrude I used to run on it, I never had a problem with going fast enough to have those number plates flip over. With that 30 HP that Terry gave... uh... sold me, its hard to keep the wind from flipping them over. Usually when I stop I'll flip them back down. One time Nate and I forgot to flip them down. We were getting our kits on and we had this creepy feeling that like someone was watching us. We scanned the horizon of Forest Lake and the Washington County deputies were glassing us from a half mile away. After they saw us with their binocs looking back at them, they motored over and asked where the registration was. I flipped the numbers over with the tip of my flipper and they were clearly relieved. I am pretty sure they thought it was one of the G-men trying to pull another fast one by running in stealth mode. I told them that we were not the notorious G-men, but that we were actually the Honey Badger Dive Team, formerly known as Team Isanti. With a huge sigh of relief, They asked why we were diving in Forest Lake and not Square Lake. We told them that Square Lake has so much dive pressure from recreational divers, that there are no more items to plunder there. We did not mention the chest of gold doubloons just a few feet below our little boat. They looked at each other with that vacant look, started their boat, and continued to keep their eyes out for looters and such.

That was a while ago though. I too have seen the light. I was considering joining anchors anonymous but in the local chapter, there aren't many members. I am going to ask Nate if he will sponsor me. How long does it take to get through all 12 steps of the program? I heard that until you get through the 6th step you need to wear mittens over your dive gloves to help resist the urge to grab anchors out of the mud. By the time you get to the 10th step of the program, you graduate to wearing those god forsaken 3-fingered crab-claw mits. By the time you get through all 12 steps you can swim bare handed over a layer of gold coins 6" thick and not be tempted to go back to your wicked ways. That's the life for me! I might even go on the road and try to convert some of you heathens. I wonder if I can get a booth at the GLSPS shipwreck show... or maybe Ghost Ships. Golly Gee Wiz... I feel so much more professional just talking about it. In fact, maybe I'll not do anymore recreational diving, and just write a report about each of the lakes I've driven my boat across.