well another story of my times
while living in Togiak Alaska, in 1965 John And Barbara O,Hara vista volunteers move to togiak
to work in the village for a year or maybe longer,they
worked in programs to help the folks there in the village. i worked as store manger for togiak
fisheries across the bay from togiak. we became
friends with the o,haras and enjoyed many good times
together, during the winter John propsed to me to
organize a boy scout troop there in togiak which with
his help i ended up with like thirty boy scouts, well
this story is not about the scout troop but about one of my trials while living
in togiak. one night in the
spring after leaving from togiak school after having
a scout meeting i headed back to my house at the
cannery the weather was warming up and the ice had been also breaking up in the
bayeach time after the tide came in seemslike less ice in the bay. at that time i really cannot remember if the tide had already been in
and went back out, i do remember that the night was
really nice and i was enjoying my ride back across
the bay.just as i was
reaching my side of the bay my snow machine started spurting and acting up finaley went dead about twenty yards from shore. i decided i would leave the
machine untill morning suspected it to be out of gas
or frozen gas line , which happens a lot in alaska.I
walked the last one hundred yards to the house, thinking i
would check the situation out come daylight . next morning i
woke up to a suprise looking out the window at togiak bay the tide was high ice cakes were every where i went to look out the window toward the village where i had left the snow machine the previous
night .to my amazement and despaire the machine was
gone i looked every where i
started looking with my scope i spotted the snow
machine off the left of the cannery sitting on an ice cake floating out to sea,
well i was really dumbfounded trying to figure out
what i could do to save my snow machine . the
decision i made almost coust
my my life, there was a ten foot run around in the
warehouse which was like five hundre yards fro wher i needed it to be i pulled thatboat with a five
horse motor and gas can to where i could get started
out in the bay. after starting the outboard i started
out after the ice cake that had stole y snow machine, i
had no idea what i was going to do but i knew i wasn<t
going to lose my new polaris mustang snow machine
without a fight. well putting along dodging ice in the
bay i made it maybe one hundred yards when the evinrude decide it would stop also i
was like still maybe like two hundred yards as araven
flies before i reached the ice cake. i started using the oars then at
last reached the ice cake, the tide was going out so the ice and the machine
were heading for seattle
maybe tokyo
japan i got on the ice cake
with the machine holding the rope fro the boat i
pulled the boat up to the edge of the ice. thinking at
that time if i placed the snow machine across the
middle of the boat i could drive it back to shore.
WRONG, i PULLED AND TUGED UNTILL I DID GET THE
MACHINE ACROSS THE BOAT but that wasn,t going to last
but a second i tied the snow machine to the boat with
a rope that done the boat ,snow machine , boat otor
just did a side flip and went to the bottom i still hsd the boat rope wrapped around my hand it was cutting the
circulation off in my hands, i was determined not to
lose every thing, here i was floating out to sea
holding on to a rope that was cutting my hands off to save the snow machine and
boat. save it for what i was
floating out to sea and no one around to help. well
needless to say i was beginning to worry. i heard a noise was that a out board motor that i heard or was i beginning to
really lose control, it was an out board that i had
heard looking back to y right i spotted a boat coming
up the coast line close to shore it was JOHN moore
and another had been out seal hunting that morning i
waved to the they came over got me and pulled the boat and snow machine to
shore. thank you GOD and the two seal hunters that saved my skin again, i will always be grateful to john moore
and his hunting partner that decided to go seal hunting that morning, don,t know if you got any seal but you sure saved one
scared GOSUK.