My Boat

My boat isn’t such a good boat. Four years ago, when I found its picture on the internets, it wasn’t such a good boat then, either. But when it arrived on that trailer after a harrowing journey from Stuart, Florida, it was an exciting moment. I met the transport guy at the Fontana gas station, and pumped the first of what would be nearly one hundred gallons of gas into that cavernous tank. The tank sufficiently and reasonably filled, I followed my new boat down to the Abbey launch where it would meet the cleansing waters of Geneva for the first time. Having already paid for a service of some sort at the dealership that sold me the boat, I was certain the boat would start. After cranking for some lengthy time, it was obvious that I shouldn’t have been nearly so certain. The boat started after a while, but it didn’t want to. But moments later I was on the open water. It was early April and it was cold, but it didn’t matter. I had arrived.

Over the years that followed, I poured money into that boat. I bought and installed a depth finder that worked for exactly one season, knowing just when the warrant would run out before deciding to cease its underwater telepathy. I replaced worn plastic bits with shiny plastic bits, the sort that are colored to look like more expensive metals but are, as a point of fact, just shiny painted plastic. I replaced the stereo and the speakers, I had a windshield made by another company from the deep south, and that windshield is now far better than was the old one. I scrubbed the hull and had the motor painted. I did lots of things to that boat.

And the boat rewarded me well, for a while. I took to trolling, more and more. I pulled deep-running baits through the dark, deep waters, and I caught some very big fish. I caught lots of fish. Northern Pike, smallmouth bass, I guess mostly just those two things, but I’m convinced that I broke off a big walleye or a monster pike on one ill-fated effort on one sunny early evening in front of the Congress Club. I fished early and often, and I ate some pizzas on that boat late into the night when fishing with friends was pushed aside by our hunger.

My children loved that boat, and I suppose they love it still. Those first two seasons I would take them out with me often, to throw those deep lines and cruise the shoreline, trying so hard to stay in 30-40′ of water. If you’ve never tried to follow any consistent depth range in Geneva you can’t know the struggle that this is. The lake is not a bowl, thank goodness, and the shoreline and the corresponding drop-offs vary from point to point and bay to bay, and it seems, from year to year. My kids liked hanging from the t-top framing, and treated this piece of the boat like an aquatic jungle gym. I would yell a bit, but mostly I liked it when they did that.

While the tone may be deceiving, I am not writing as someone would write about something that they no longer have. I still have this boat. It’s currently covered in snow, pushed behind some trees at the very far end of my property. When we shoot clay pigeons, I make sure to tell everyone to not shoot in that general direction, but I know some still do. The boat is still there, and it’s still important to me. But it let me down often last year. It wouldn’t start. When the starting problem was fixed, and it started for a week or so, then it wouldn’t start, again. The engine devours gas, so much so that it doesn’t seem possible. The one hundred gallon tank, once something that I considered an off-shore type luxury, is actually a necessity if you’re to boat for any considerable distance. Like, say, from Williams Bay to Lake Geneva and back.

The boat is now at a crossroads, and I with it. The engine troubles must be sorted. The hull must be properly waxed. The depth finder must once again find its depth. The starter must do as it is told, as it has told us it does by its very name. These things must be fixed in order to make it a better boat. In what feels like the dead of winter, it would be easy to assume these are tasks for another day. Surely boats can’t be of importance when the ice is so thick and the snowmobiles cruise where the boats once did. But open water isn’t more than 6 weeks away, and I need to be ready. In order to make a success of old age, I suppose one must start young. And in order to make a success of spring, one must do work in the winter.

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