Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
The Ladies In Our Lives
There’s a reason boats are so often named after women. We love their beautiful lines, enjoy the places they take us and things they show us, we’re proud to show them off to our friends, we cherish the memories we glean from time spent with them, they teach us so much, and they enrich our lives in so many ways. Oh yeah - they can also require a lot of attention, get us in trouble, influence where we live and what we do with our free time, and can be very costly to maintain! They say “the happiest two days in a boat owners life is the day he buys his boat and the day he sells his boat” also that the definition of a boat is “a hole in the water in which you pour money”. And even though I’m really tired of hearing those overworked decrepit old sayings, I just had to relay them again for the benefit of making my point about how important boats can be in some of our lives. We may love-em, but darn if keeping one isn’t one huge responsibility and sometimes a downright pain in the butt!
Over the past few decades I’ve penned more than just a few articles about owning and operating boats, the usual focus being topics about safety, maintenance, equipment, navigation and such. The inspiration for those stories usually came from personal observations of some really bonehead things I’ve done and seen others do with their boats, and “yikes” there has never been any shortage of that kind of fodder for a story! So, for this column I thought I’d pull some highlights from a few vintage stories I did about boats but also throw in the back-story that inspired me to write the original piece.
Name That Boat
I have a friend who named his boat after his wife. He didn’t really want to, but as she wasn’t real keen on him spending so much money on a passion that would keep him and his attention diverted from home, family, and her, he figured that splashing his bride’s name across the transom would somehow foster acceptance of the new fiberglass lady in his life. It didn’t – within a couple years the divorce was final, she got the house, he got the boat. They say it’s bad luck to change the name of a boat, he did it before and then again after the divorce. A year later the boat sank in its slip. I don’t believe in superstitions, but darn!!!
Boat = Work
A few years ago a fellow I know bought a modest size boat that cost him as much as much as one might pay for a small house in a decent neighborhood. He was quite proud of his vessel and would spend as much time cleaning it at the end of each voyage as he did using it. That level of maintenance lasted about one year, with each successive season the time spent cleaning the boat at the end of the day reduced proportionately. Now the five year old boat is lucky to get a freshwater rinse at the end of the day and I’ve noticed that on occasion even that doesn’t happen until the morning after a fishing trip. I guess the honeymoon is over!
A brand new boat is all shiny and fun, but over time when their parts and systems begin to get old and begin to falter, the amount of effort and dollars it takes to keep the boat looking good and running reliable increase substantially. The bigger the boat the bigger the work load is some simple math I quickly learned when I made the quantum leap from owning a19-foot private boat to a 40-foot charter boat and discovered that for every hour I fished each season I would need to spend at least “two” hours doing some kind of maintenance back at the dock or in the boatyard. Boat work can be expensive, dirty, and sometimes back-breaking, but there’s no getting around it, if you want to protect your investment and have a vessel that will get you out and back safely and without constantly being plagued by malfunctions or breakdowns, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep everything in top form. Yeah, boats are a lot fun - but a lot of work.
Too Much Stuff
Boaters need a lot of equipment, tools, and tackle and to catch fish and maintain their vessels. And over time we often end up accumulating a lot more stuff than we really need. A lot of us also have a habit of using our boats as floating storage sheds for all that extra stuff we never use but just don’t want to get rid of. A friend bought a small boat to which he kept adding more and more equipment and accessories. Eventually he had it loaded with so much weight it would no longer get up on plane. At first he thought that the motor was malfunctioning but when he realized he just had too much stuff aboard. He loved his “stuff” so much that his remedy was to get a bigger motor!
Whether it’s from a hot bite or a mechanical malfunction, when things get hectic on the water the last thing anyone needs is to waste time searching for critical tackle or tools hidden among a bunch of junk that hasn’t been used for years. Boaters would do well to periodically scrutinize everything they have aboard and decide what’s really necessary to have aboard and what’s just taking up space, because a clutter-free boat will always prove to be the safest and most efficient fishing machine.
The Buck Stops Here
No captain wants to cancel a fishing trip at the last minute because of bad weather, but that’s exactly what I had to do that morning and my charter clients were not happy about it. The wind wasn’t forecast to blow 15-20 out of the northeast, but that’s what it was doing at 6am and also why I had had to explain to the six fellows who had just finished an early morning 3-hour drive in from Baltimore and were now standing on the dock behind my boat, “I’m sorry but we won’t be able to get on the ocean today”. They were obviously disappointed but didn’t argue with me as they begrudgingly picked up their coolers and ambled back to their vehicles for what I thought was going to be a morning drive home for them.
I learned differently that afternoon when I was visited by a mate from one of our local headboats. He couldn’t wait to tell me about the six guys who bought tickets to go out with them that day. “They were pissed-off and calling you every name in the book because you wouldn’t take them out this morning. I told them that it was going to be rough and the only reason we were still going was because we have a much bigger boat and aren’t going out very far. But we were barely outside of the inlet when they all started having an attitude adjustment as one by one they headed to the rail to barf up their breakfast! It was so rough we had to come back early and by the time we got back to the dock they had nothing but praise for you for not taking them out.”
Whether it's a private boat, charter boat, headboat, or an ocean liner, every vessel has some kind of "skipper" in charge. This person might be the owner of the boat, a Coast Guard licensed captain, or just the one who rented the boat for the day and who has a little more experience than their fellow crew members. It doesn't matter if he goes by "captain, admiral, master, dad" or "Uncle Joe," neither does it matter if it's a month-long cruise to Bermuda or a half-hour trip across the bay - whoever accepts the role of being in charge must also accept the fact that the burden of keeping their crew and vessel out of harm's way rests squarely and solely on their own shoulders, the "buck" always stops with the skipper. And sometimes the most important decision he’ll make is whether or not to leave the dock.
Pleasure Boating
I had a client that used to book my boat 5-6 times a season. He had a condo in Ocean City and if he wasn’t on my boat he’d have a trip or two with someone else. He just loved to fish! Eventually he retired, moved here year-round, and figured that since he’d now be able to fish a whole lot more, he could save a lot of money on charter fees if he owned his own boat. I’ll spare you all the details but suffice to say after one season his relatively new 28-footer was up for sale. It seems that by the time he got done paying for a slip at a local marina, insurance, maintenance, tackle, equipment and everything else needed to get and keep his rig fishing, he already spent almost twice what he normally did on charter fees. And that didn’t include payments on the boat itself!
Anyone contemplating buying a boat needs to first take a hard and realistic look at their own situation and decide if they have the time and skills to maintain their own vessel or a lot of money to pay someone else to do it for them. Folks also have to consider how often they’ll really be using their boat. Probably 50% of the boats that fill our local marinas stay tied up 95% of the time because, even though they might start each new season with hopes and dreams of fishing every weekend, when the summer finally comes to an end most boaters will discover that due to bad weather and other unforeseen circumstances they seldom got to fish or go out on the water as much as they had hoped. So unless they get out a lot, most folks would be way ahead financially if they didn’t own a boat of their own but just went ahead and chartered one whenever they wanted to go fishing or cruising. Those who go out on charter boats don’t have to worry about fishing licenses, ice, bait, tackle or where to go, if there’s a malfunction it’s not their responsibility to get it fixed, and at the end of the day there’s no fuel bill to pay or boat to clean, and charter boat clients never have to worry about monthly boat payments, slip fees or insurance premiums – now that’s what I call “pleasure boating!”
Drop Anchor – Quick!
While returning home from a fishing trip we had a fuel problem that shut us down just outside of the inlet. With the current rushing in, the last thing I wanted to do was drift into the inlet and anywhere near one of the stone jetties. So despite all the Saturday afternoon boat traffic I made a quick decision to drop anchor so we wouldn’t get into any more trouble than we already were. As you can imagine, a 40-foot boat anchored in the mouth of the inlet on a busy afternoon in August is going to draw more than just a little criticism from every boater that passes by. And believe me we got our share of it before finally getting our fuel issue straightened out and back underway, but the anchor is what really saved our butts that day.
With a pulpit up on the bow holding an anchor that’s always rigged and ready for quick deployment, for us the process of getting us hooked into the bottom and the boat safely stopped took less than a minute. Knowing that our predicament could have been a lot worse if we had to fumble around with our anchor before sending it to the seafloor I was surprised a few days later when I was aboard a friend’s boat whose grounding tackle (anchor, chain, line) was in a compartment below the deck beneath lifejackets, fenders, and a water hose. “All we do is fish offshore, and I never anchor my boat,” was the excuse he gave me when I questioned his storage decision.
Every boat should have an anchor rigged and ready to deploy at a moment’s notice, because boaters will never know when a drop of the “hook” could save that important “lady” in their life from wandering off to a place they don't want her to go! §
