Rescuing a Fellow Boater on Lake Stevens

What a crazy weekend… I determined that I probably had my boat slightly in gear when I tried to start it last weekend, so it actually runs fine (newbie mistake). We were out on Lake Stevens trolling for kokanee on Saturday when I saw a guy in a boat near the east shore waving at me. I thought it was a friend or someone I knew, so we pulled our fishing rods up and came closer. It turned out to be a complete stranger who was in trouble. He had an old bowrider, slightly bigger than my boat, and his stern drive engine had died and left him adrift after a couple of laps around the lake. The wind was blowing him against the shore in front of somebody’s house. At first I was a little uncomfortable with what he was asking me to do. While I tried to assess the danger to my own boat and jockey for the best position to help, he wound up waist high in the water physically holding his boat back from the beach. He somehow managed to push it away from shore with an oar and jump back in. He extended us a boat hook, so we hooked it to my bow rail and I slowly towed him backwards out towards the middle of the lake. When safely away from shore, I pulled around to his starboard side, we both put our fenders out, and we tied our boats together. From there I pushed him back to the boat launch like a tug boat. When we got there we saw a couple of boats already trying to dock, so I blew my can horn and motioned for them to move away. I found our awkward combined vessel to be very difficult to maneuver, but after a couple of tries I managed to nudge him right against the dock just as my two passengers freed the lines. I reversed and backed away, waved goodbye, and we went on our way. That was a little scary, but with teamwork we pulled it off.