The Great Sinking of the Audi

Randy's Audi sank in the ocean.  I kid you not.  You might be thinking to yourself Wait, didn't they have a truck blow up too?  Yes!  Yes, we did.  The horrible, bad luck we have with cars continues.  At this point I would say we are cursed.  In our defense, we weren't driving the Audi when it sank.  It was Randy's BYU roommate who gets the credit for this catastrophe.

We hosted Randy's BYU roommate reunion in September. We had a ton of fun but I'll share the details about that in a separate post.  Here's what you need to know...

We were staying in a huge beach house in Seabrook WA and we heard there was a nearby beach you can drive your cars on.  Randy and I took the Audi down to check it out and had a lot of fun driving through the wet sand and scattering seagulls.  It looked like a car commercial and we had a lot of fun.  

A couple hours later Randy decided we should take all eight couples back to that beach so we loaded up in the truck and the Audi.  Randy and I were in the truck and our friends were following us in the Audi.  When we got to the beach we knew right away the tide was coming in because the beach was so much smaller with much less space to drive.  We couldn't even drive as far down the beach as we had earlier because what once had been a small stream had become a deep, wide creek filled from the tide.  We turned around and weren't too far from the beach entrance when we came across another wide stream.  We drove through it just fine in the truck but the water was definitely about 2-feet deep.  We quickly got through it and turned to watch the Audi behind us.  This is when things went bad.

I think Steve who was driving the Audi saw all the water spray around us as we drove the truck through and probably thought he'd go across where it was less deep.  I don't know.  It all happened really fast.  Anyway, Steve didn't follow us and went farther away from the shoreline, probably thinking the water wouldn't be as deep even though it was much, much wider to cross.  He hit the water going really fast, with the sun roof wide open and the Audi slammed into 3-4 feet of water and the engine cut off.  Water dumped in through the sunroof and one of the guys in back tried to open the door (dumb idea) and of course water started pouring in.  Then Steve kept trying to start the car again, further flooding the engine with more water.  

I tried not to die.  Randy calmly parked the truck (on dry sand) and waded out while I looked on in horror.  There was a ranger who pulled up and when I asked if he could help pull us out, he laughed and said the tide was coming in and he would get stuck if he tried to pull us out of the creek. (yes, it was an actual creek that had filled with the tide coming in, transforming it from a small stream beach goers could cross, to a large creek).  He told us to leave the Audi there over night and try to get it in the morning.  I died again.

Everyone climbed out of the Audi through the open sunroof and we miraculously got it out of Park and pushed it out of the water.  Everyone watching us was shocked we were able to do this because the creek kept getting deeper as we scratched our heads wondering what to do.  Water continued to pour out from under the Audi as we pushed it out of the creek and onto dry sand.  The ranger lent us his tow rope and towed the Audi off the beach and we took everyone home in the truck.

Long story a little bit shorter...The engine was hydro locked and because we lease the Audi, we knew we would have to replace it if it was totaled (for $44,000).  Steve covered the cost of the tow truck to the Audi dealership ($1,000) and we found out several days later that it was totaled.  Water was still dripping from it and mold had started growing inside because they never opened the windows.  Insurance doesn't typically cover stupidity but since that beach is considered a road way, our insurance covered the claim.  (miracle!)

Watch this video of the crash.  Steve's wife knows it's bad, meanwhile our friends in the back seat are just laughing.  

We are trying to get Steve's insurance to take the hit because he was the driver and has a great insurance record, unlike the Ball family.  But that is sounding too good to be true at this point so lets just assume we will be kicked off our auto insurance policy again.  For the third time.

One of our friends took this picture of us as we were trying to decide if we were financially ruined or not :)