LOST PROP AND LOBSTER POTS   Bud Garner  Bill Smith was my neighbor living only two blocks from me as the crow flies. He lived on NE 9th St., and I lived on NE 8th St. Bill was about 4 years older than I therefore we did not generally see each other very often. Bill was attending the University of Florida when WW II started and he joined the Army Air Corp .After being selected for flight training he received his wings and was assigned to fighter training. Bill flew fighter missions in the Pacific in the P-47 thunderbolt and the P-51 Mustang. After the war ended he returned to Pompano and joined his father, R.D. Smith in the plumbing and appliance business. I joined the US Navy and after I returned to Pompano at the end of that war I was taking stock of the direction I might take for my life. .Bill stopped by my house one day and asked if I were working and if not would I help him in the plumbing business that his dad had turned over to him. He needed a plumbers helper and he thought of me . I agreed to work for him as he was plumbing in the summertime and was actively engaged in winter vegetable farming also with his dad. It so happened I was in the same situation so we agreed to plumb in the summertime and farm in the winter. This arrangement worked out fine. He was the plumber and I was his helper. We became fast friends and our work was rewarding. Bill finally quit farming and went into the plumbing, septic tank and LP gas business full time , I helped him for many years in all of these endeavors. Bill had always kept an outboard fishing boat and fished whenever he could. This brings me to the true story I have decided to call: “Lost Props and Lobster pots.” Bill owned a 17 ft. Lapestrake boat ( that is one that has individual boards making up the bottom and sides of the boat as opposed to one that has solid wood or today, fiberglass.) These type boats, if left out of the water for any length of time, would shrink and leak profusely until it had been in the water for enough time for the wood to absorb water, tighten up the leaks, and then it was fine. although they usually leaked some water all the time. One afternoon Bill came to me and proposed going outside. That was the term Pompano fishermen and boaters used for going into the ocean through the Hillsboro Inlet, to see if we could spear some lobsters on the first or second reef. The water was shallow enough in places that the special two piece gig Bill had made would enable us, after looking down through a glass bottom bucket to maybe get a mess of the spiney backs. The boat had been partially submerged for some time so we decided to just go on out and let the boat absorb enough water to stop the leaks. This was a bad decision as it required continually bailing to keep a half way dry boat Going out Hillsboro Inlet, we went South and could see many lobster floats marking traps that the lobster fishermen put out along the reefs. Some of these floats were “short sheeted” that is a rope was secured on one end of the lobster trap and the other end was tied to a cork float and this float could not rise above the surface of the water but would be suspended a couple of feet below the surface. This was great for keeping a traps location hid from poachers but bad for anyone in that area with an outboard motor that stuck down about three feet in the water. If and when the prop met one of these ropes, it would immediately wrap around the prop, usually shear the propeller pin and there you were, tied up to a lobster trap and not being able to move. This was precisely what happened to Bill and I as we threaded our way through the floats. We had already been stopping and peering through the glass bottom bucket, although there were lobster on the bottom in the rocks, the water was a little to deep for the gig and we weren’t prepared to dive for them, although in the past we had. It was getting late in the afternoon and while moving along slowly we suddenly had the motor shut down and we came to a quick stop. Now, we had a problem, we had tangled with one of the “shorts” that was moored just below the surface. After a few choice words, Bill raised the motor up, locked it in place and began getting the rope from around the motor and propeller. It became necessary to pull-up the trap we were wrapped up to. It was only about 15 feet down. Bill finished untangling the trap and noted there were no lobster in the trap. so he dropped it overboard where it immediately sank. Bill pulled the cotterpin holding the propeller on the shaft that now spun freely because the pin had been sheared. Bill removed the nut from the shaft and in the process of removing the propeller from the shaft, a sudden wave hit the side of the boat and ‘horror of all horrors” Bill lost his grip on the propeller and it quickly sank to the bottom of the Atlantic into much deeper water now that we had drifted off the reef. Unbeknown to us, our troubles were just beginning, for looking to the South, I spotted the bow waves of a boat traveling at high speed and it was heading straight for us. I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, there we were in the middle of someone’s lobster pots, couldn’t move and we had reason to believe the owners would very shortly be here checking if we were robbing his traps. Sure enough, the person in the boat pulled alongside of our boat, pointed a lever action rifle at us (now, this got our attention very quickly) and in a very menacing voice accused us of robbing his traps and he was going to shoot us on the spot. This is a very precarious situation we found ourselves in, Bill showed him the pile of rope we had unwound from the motor and told him to come aboard and see for himself that we had no lobsters, that we had been ensnared by the under water float and had to pull up the trap to get the rope free and there were no lobster in the trap and we had returned it to the water. After what seemed a life time of taking abuse from this armed (and dangerous) man, he finally cooled down a bit and said he lived in Ft. Lauderdale and had a friend that lived on the beach who had called him and said it looked as if someone was robbing his traps. After he had finished ‘raking” us over, Bill asked if he would tow us to the Hillsboro inlet so he could call for someone to pick us up and he could get another prop. Our request fell on deaf ears, and he, without even looking at us, pulled away and in parting, remarked that he would kill anyone he caught robbing his traps. I believe he would. Now, its almost dark and we are still several hundered yards out in the ocean but the wind is slowly pushing towards land. When we finally beached the boat, we were a couple miles South of the Inlet, Bill left me with the boat and went up to find a phone, which at this time they were few and far between. Bill finally returned with a spare propeller that his wife, Irene, had brought out to him after he called her. Motor repaired, we launched it into the surf, starting North, and now it was pitch black. Little did we know that our ordeal wasn’t over yet. As we approached the inlet, we were coming in on low tide, it was dark and at that time there were no channel markers. We had to guess at the channel, but we guessed wrong and just getting even with the exposed rock on the North side of the inlet, the worst of all things that could happen to a “lapestrake” boat, we ran aground on the rocks. Without a light, other than what the lighthouse provided as it rotated, we jumped out of the boat and began pushing and pulling and shaking and, “gently” talking to it, we finally got into deeper water, climbed aboard into about 10 inches of water in the leaking boat. Continuing into the inlet and under the Hillsboro bridge, we were now home free, we thought. Suddenly, we were blinded by a bright spotlight and a blinking red light. We were being stopped by a Marine Patrol officer, He immediately berated us for traveling without running lights, his investigation found no life preservers, no paddle, no fire extinguisher and no anchor. (no lobster either). The officer (this was the first time I had ever seen a Marine patrol officer , I didn’t know we had them.) After we explained the things we had experienced for the last 7 hours beginning that afternoon, he decided we were not out at night joy riding and said he would not give us any citations but not to “leave home without the essentials in the future” which we readily agreed to. He further escorted us to Bills waterfront home . That was the last time Bill and I ever ventured outside looking for Lobster, opting to get ours in a restaurant or supermarket. I think we both felt we were very lucky in getting back in one piece.  (This is the first time after some 55 years this true story has ever been told.) Bud Garner