Our neighborhood made the boating news twice in 2024, stories that have fueled the offseason hot-stove league here at the Lake View Inn, where everyone is welcome to their opinion. I’m almost certain you heard about Ryan Borgwardt, the fellow who tried to stage his drowning in Big Green Lake this past August. I got calls and texts from all over the country on this one.
Borgwardt flips his kayak into the lake, leaving behind ID and a tackle box, and then paddles a little tube to shore, where he has stashed an e-bike, which he rides 60 miles to Madison, where he catches a bus to Michigan, crosses into Canada, then catches a flight to meet a woman in Georgia. The Republic of, not the state. But for a month, everyone thought the poor guy had drowned in the state’s deepest lake. Everyone, of course, except my good friend Chuck Larson, who has watched many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries, and immediately smelled a rat.
“Using my Spock logic, I deduce this is a ruse,” Chuck said after a week of high-tech searching had not located a corpse. “Nobody fishes Big Green from a kayak, especially that side of the lake. The wake reverb off the sandstone bluff makes it too rough. And the water is 260 feet deep. Was he trolling for lake trout from a kayak? I don’t think so. Finally, they found his life jacket. Have you ever seen a kayaker not wearing a life jacket? My next call would be to check his passport records.”
Borgwardt had requested a replacement passport and left one on his dresser at home, so the county sheriff didn’t check passport records for a month. Once it was revealed that he had used the replacement to cross into Canada, the jig was up. And $40,000 had been invested looking for his waterlogged body. Borgwardt voluntarily returned to Wisconsin in December. His wife is reportedly pissed.
Read Next: Tow or Salvage?
We are also still discussing the matter of Deep Thought (oh, the irony), a 33-foot Chris-Craft Roamer that has been beached on the Lake Michigan shore near Milwaukee since October 18. The story goes that the new owners purchased the boat in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and intended to cruise it home to Mississippi. Except they ran out of gas. The boat drifted onto the sandy shore just south of Bradford Beach, and the owner has apparently not been seen since. After determining that the boat did not pose a hazard to navigation or the environment, the Coast Guard declined to get involved. Turns out, Wisconsin does not have a formal program to address abandoned vessels, and no statute requiring removal if said vessel does not impede navigation. So, there it sits. The boat has become a tourist attraction, with a Google Maps pin. It was decorated with a pine garland for the holidays and tagged with graffiti and an “I Closed Wolski’s” sticker. A commercial towing and salvage company made two failed attempts to pull the boat off the beach, but its running gear is reportedly 4 feet deep in sand, and the engine room is filled with water. Or now, probably ice.
Chuck is working on a scheme to salvage this vessel, using a fire truck to pump high-pressure water under the hull and wash away the sand. So, let us know if you spot a pumper truck for sale. Chuck intends to rename the Roamer Finders Keepers.
