I've had two close calls on the Ohio River recently. Both times it was the motor cutting out and not starting. The first time it was at night and our boat had drifted out in the middle of the river. I made the comment that it would be bad right now if a barge was coming. About 30 seconds later we saw blinking lights. I said, "at least we have a trolling motor" and my buddy said "The battery is dead". I said, "at least we have an oar", my buddy said he took it out and put it in the other boat. I was looking to see which side was going to be the shortest swim. We had just enough juice in the battery to get out of the way of that thing. The other one was when we were fishing below Meldahl Dam. We moved into position around all the other boats and took the motor out of gear. We started fishing and didn't take just a couple of minutes and we were floating toward the dam. We put the thing in gear and went back down stream and started the process over again. This time as we were drifting at a fast rate toward the dam, the motor cuts out. My buddy looks at me and says "that's not good". Sure enough, the coil is shot again. Theres no starting it. We put the trolling motor down and put it on high. Currents too strong. We look at shore and see a bunch of bank casters and thought we should try to make it to shore. NO WAY! It's too far. My buddy says the only way we are going to make it out is to go toward the dam and then try to sling shot it toward the second gate. Just as we were getting in the white water we made it to the second gate which shot us down stream. Now we are a couple 2 or 3 miles from the boat ramp and it's getting dark. A very nice fellow gave us a tow back to the ramp. I thought for sure we would get tipped or be pinned up against the dam between the gates and have to have the Coast Guard come and recue us. I think a good kicker motor would be nice after the experiences we've had lately.