I really thought this was going to be the Summer of the Boat. That’s what I’ve been calling it since last September, partly because the phrase reminds me of a nineties horror movie title, the sheer ring of which I figured would keep me on track towards my goal. The goal in question, as you might have guessed, was to secure a boat, make good use of it over summer, and in the process become proficient at boating.
It didn’t exactly pan out that way. The first roadblock was that it took much longer than I’d originally expected to get the boat I wanted made. Who knew that custom marine fabrication could be such a lengthy process? To be fair, I had requested a lot of bells and whistles that I later realised were somewhat redundant, such as an on-deck saltwater plunge pool. The engineer told me that, while it would technically be achievable, it would greatly compromise the functionality of a boat of the proposed size.
Once the hiccups were ironed out and the boat finally ready to go, it was already mid-December, and we all know how difficult it is to carry out plans of any kind between then and January 5th at the earliest. So by the time I finally got around to giving it a test drive, summer was verging on half over. Then, everything was on fire, and I couldn’t get out to the coast where I had the boat stored, and it generally seemed like there were bigger fish to fry. Before I knew, it was the end of February and I’d only taken the boat out a handful of times.
Long story short, I still barely know my bait boards from my snapper racks, and before long I’ll be coming up to winter again with nothing to show for it on the boating front. I guess you could say that progress was made, though. I did finally get a custom-welded boat, after all, which is more than most people can say.