Colton couple spends stormy night adrift on Snake River

Ernie Riley probably should have had a bad feeling.

Last week he started reading Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe’s 18th Century tale of a shipwrecked man stranded on an island.

But when he and wife Michele brought home their new boat, they could not wait to put it in the water when they were presented with free time Friday night. So they packed up the former 18-foot Coast Guard patrol boat, recently purchased from a fellow in Lewiston, and headed down to Wawawai to try it out on Lower Granite Lake.

They arrived just about sunset.

“We probably should have waited until the morning,” Ernie told the Gazette Tuesday. “We got such a late start down there, but we just wanted to get it in the water.”

It was (pardon the cliché) a dark and stormy night.

“Most of what I remember is that it was pitch dark and the engine wouldn’t start,” said Michele.

Ernie decided to point the boat to an inlet just upriver from Wawawai, a spot Ernie expected would be calm enough for them to spend the night hiding from the storm’s wrath.

On the way to the quiet cove, however, the boat’s battery went dead and the motor flooded and quit.

Stuck in the middle of a driving storm that brought rains and a strong wind, the Rileys tried to drop anchor to keep from washing ashore.

But the gusts of over 30 miles per hour kept twisting the boat around and yanking the anchor off the river floor.

With high winds whipping the boat around the lake, the couple had to use their oars to keep the boat from crashing into the rocky shore.

They also had to dodge debris floating downstream towards Lower Granite Dam.

“We had something hit us in the middle of the night and whack our boat on the side. I guess it was a log,” Ernie paused. “I’d hate to think what else it could have been.”

Ernie figured the wind blew their craft two miles upriver before the anchor finally grabbed hold. With the moon obscured by storm clouds, Ernie said he attempted to figure his position in relation to the power cables the are suspended above the river.

Finally, Ernie spotted a car driving along the river road. He started blinking his flashlight at the car, and the driver finally noticed and stopped.

“We started yelling, but we couldn’t hear anything he was saying,” said Ernie. “He almost got in his car and left, but I started waving my flashlight around and I guess he called 911.”

A short time later, Ernie spotted the lights of another car. He again flashed his lights, and the light bar of a sheriff’s car began pouring red and blue lights into the air.

The deputy yelled to the distressed boaters that help was on the way, and shortly Deputy Jim Pellisier showed up in the county’s boat to tow the Rileys back to shore, where they safely pulled their boat out of the water and headed up the hill to dry, calm Colton for long-awaited sleep.

“They looked like they had a pretty rough night,” said Pellisier.

All tolled, the couple spent just over eight hours awake on the Snake and walked away with a harrowing tale and more knowledge about their new craft.

“It’s a pretty nice little boat,” said Ernie. “I know a bit more about it now. Like I’m going to buy a spare battery.”