Fun-loving midstate adventurers embark on Mississippi River trip

Their maiden voyage ended in disaster.

They had put in at Hawkinsville -- nine friends on two pontoon motorboats -- bound for the Georgia coast.

The journey was to consist mostly of a few days of goofing off and taking in whatever scenery their cruise to the ocean served up.

“We didn’t get to Abbeville,” recalled Brad Michael, the Macon businessman who planned the trip.

The Ocmulgee River proved too shallow.

They ran aground.

“Aluminum pontoon boats and rocks don’t mix,” Michael said the other day. “The pontoons looked like a crushed can.”

They were stuck in boats in the middle of the river. Then it got dark, and in that remote stretch of the Ocmulgee, cellphones didn’t have reception.

During the night, some other boaters floated up. Sometime about daybreak, the other boaters, who’d cruised on, alerted authorities in the next town.

“They were getting ready to send helicopters for us,” Michael, 43, said.

But about then the river rose just enough, and they floated to the next landing.

Despite the shipwrecks, a tradition was born on that 2008 excursion.

Nine other motorboat trips, somewhat more successful ones, have followed. Beers are had, sleep is missed.

The friends, men who are for the most part in their 30s and 40s, have navigated the Savannah River from Augusta to Tybee Island and even ventured as far as St. Simons Island.

They’ve returned to the Ocmulgee and boated to the Atlantic Ocean. One year they took the Intracoastal Waterway from St. Simons to Daytona.

Brian Adams, a Macon attorney and one of four river-trippers who has gone on every voyage, said there is something magical about being on the water.

“The serenity of it all,” he said, “and the companionship of a group of guys.”

One of the men, Spencer Reeves, was 63 when the journeys began. He hasn’t missed a trip.

A year or two after their disastrous first outing, he made the others promise that when he turned 70 they’d take him down the Mississippi River.

This year, Reeves, a retiree who used to run a magazine distributorship, turned 70.

“We were like, ‘Oh, crap,’ ’’ Adams, 36, said.

Come Wednesday, a party of seven will set out from Lansing, Iowa, in a 60-foot houseboat. There’ll be a hired captain on board.

Michael, the businessman who runs an embroidery and screen-printing company, said he and his pals consider Reeves their “buddy-slash-dad.”

“He kind of takes care of us. We’re a rowdy crew, and he makes sure we don’t act too stupid,” Michael said. “He just loves being with us. He likes the adventure.”

They plan to head downriver on the Mississippi for a couple of days before returning to Iowa on Saturday.

One of the friends is taking along a copy of Mark Twain’s book about Huck Finn.

“Everybody tells us this isn’t the Ocmulgee we’re going on. Of course, we say, ‘We got it.’ We think we’re bulletproof,” Michael said.

“The scariest part of the trips is us. We act like we’re 12.”

Last year, in the middle of the night in a lightning storm, the voyagers ran out of gas on the Ocmulgee. One of their boats was already broken.

They were en route from Abbeville to St. Simons. They drifted through the night and eventually both of their vessels floated to a boat ramp.

Then they found 10 gallons of gas -- in cans -- that they’d forgotten about aboard the broken-down boat.

“Every single year,” Michael said, “something happens.”

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.

This story was originally published September 6, 2015 at 10:26 PM with the headline "Fun-loving midstate adventurers embark on Mississippi River trip ."