All of a sudden we hear the engine die down and the boat started to come to a stop. My cousins and I get out of the cabin on the boat and we notice my uncle swearing while turning the steering wheel back & forth. Remembering what the forecast was going to be today I look up at the sky and see the beginning of a horrible storm. Looking back at everyone I notice everyone having these faces of fear and uncertainty of what was about to happen. I look towards my older cousin and he starts telling us that we are stuck in the middle of the bay and a storm is coming our way.

Five hours before this event on the fourth of July my whole family came down to my beach house for my birthday on July 3rd and a fourth of July party. We were all packing things up like sodas, chairs, and other items in the truck, my dad and uncle both have a boat which we were going to take to an island we go to every year. We finished packing and headed to the dock in the morning to start the party.

We finally got there and got everything on the boat and started to head out. As we were heading to the island I started to look around and noticed that far away you could see that the sky was gray and gloomy, it wasn't raining but it looked like it could any minute. A couple of minutes later we finally got to the island and some of us anchored the boat while the rest of us grabbed chairs and other things and carried them off towards the middle of the island. Once we got settled we were all there for an hour or more when suddenly we heard thunder and lightning. We grabbed what we brought and rushed back to the boat. All of the adults except my uncle climbed into my dad's boat. The other boat was just the kids and my uncle.

As we started to leave the dark clouds and wind came rolling in making the water choppy and rough. My uncle's boat was a little bigger so he decided to go a different way to save time instead of going the way we normally go. Everyone but my uncle was in the cabin of the boat trying to keep warm while my uncle was trying to figure out how to get back to the dock and most likely second-guessing himself on why he came this way. Five minutes of us chatting it became dead silent because we heard the motor make some strange noises like it was dragging through the sand. All of us got out and we saw my uncle getting angry, we then realized that we were in shallow water and we were stuck. By this time the wind had gotten worse and it had started pouring with thunder and lightning in the sky. He started mumbling under his breath and looked at us for a while until he finally told us what he was thinking of doing . ¨I want every single one of you to get out of the boat and start pushing until it starts to move while I try and steer it ̈ were his exact words. After he had said that all of us gave him looks like are you crazy or serious but we had to listen to him if we wanted to get back to the dock before the storm had gotten worse. When I had gotten in I started to think about all of the things in the water and if something bad could happen. After a while, he had given us directions on what to do we then started to follow them.

While we were pushing the current started to get stronger and it became harder for us to stay still. The water had gotten colder making us start to shiver. It had been about 2 hours now since we had gotten stuck and the weather had gotten worse. It wasn't until we hit the third hour when we noticed that the boat had started to move. We rushed onto the boat and my uncle was able to start the motor and get the boat to deeper water. By that time we got back to the dock, the sky was black with thunder and lightning and the current was rough with strong winds. We were all soaked from getting into the water but also by the heavy rain pouring on us. Around 5 o'clock almost 5 hours after our start home we had finally gotten back to the dock and saw everyone waiting for us with worried expressions on their faces.

Later on, we had found out that the storm was a hurricane and it had flooded many houses near the beach and had destroyed many other things. This happened years ago when I was younger but it has stuck with me all this time. I have learned to always be prepared for situations like this so something like this won't happen again.