My Life Aquatic

We’re back on the water. To explain how we got there, I’ll give you an account of my aquatic history.

My first boat was a 12-ft. Jon boat with a 3 h.p. Sears engine. I found this engine in the old smoke house on the farm. I have no idea how it came to be there, as I can’t imagine my father would have ever spent any money on something as frivolous as an outboard motor.

I knocked off a layer of dirt-dobber nests and general dirt, and employing all the mechanical acumen I could muster as a 13-year-old boy, a performed a thorough tune-up (meaning I cleaned the air-filter and changed the spark plug). Using a can of ether, the engine started, and ran.

The boat, which was hauled upside down in the back of my Dad’s pickup, was then christened for the Lion’s Club float trip from Paydown to Rollins Ferry. I was joined in my boat by my friends Troy and James. My friends Llans and Travis launched at the same time in a canoe. Right when the little Sears was running out of gas (it’s gas tank was built onto the motor and was the size of a coffee can, so this often), that 2-cycle engine would hit a bust of speed, and we could gain on the canoe. But at normal cruising speed, the canoe was faster.

The next year I acquired a 1956 Johnson Seahorse 10-hp motor. I paid $200 of my own money for it, but I don’t remember where exactly I got it. It often started, at least with the help of the can of ether, and had enough power to pass the canoe, and shear a lot of pins. This might motor could handle more boat, and more boat I gave it, via the purchase of a 14-ft. Jon boat from the Missouri Department of Conservation surplus auction for $140, a mere $10 per foot.

This boat served us well on the Lion’s Club float trip, and it was a substantial enough setup to give us great confidence. Once Llans and I decided to see what was downstream from Rollins Ferry. We found this previously unexplored part of the river to be a strange and wonderful place, but the return journey to our truck involved many broken shear pins, and eventually the loss of the nut the held on the prop. We finally made it back, and we never went downstream again.

The Johnson lacked the romantic appeal that a 1956 Chevy Bel-Air would have, but had somewhat worse dependability, so I decided to upgrade. I took the Johnson and the Sears to the marina at Rolla to trade them in on a better motor. The marina offered me 15 cents per pound, the going rate on aluminum. I walked out with a 1974 Mercury 9.8 h.p. that I paid $400, with the salesman saying, “It might blow up the first time you use it. If it does, don’t bring it back here.”

But it didn’t. We liked it better than the Johnson because it had a clutch instead of shear pins, and it always started, though it often took many pulls. The black rubber handle left skid marks across our chests as we furiously pulled the engine to life. We wore those skid marks as badges of honor.

I wasn’t real comfortable having  this much boat hanging out of the back of the truck, so I built a boat trailer in my high-school metal shop class, making up the design as I went along. I used hubs, wheels (and tires) I got off of a Volkswagen at Vic’s junkyard, and aside from those and the hitch and springs, the rest of it was from scratch. I think an engineering error resulted in the springs never really having any spring, but the trailer carried the boat to the Gasconade River many times, and even carried me into my relationship with Ann. We took the boat to Pomme De Terre Lake when we were dating. We caught a fish out of the boat that we had for dinner that night. The past several years the trailer has served as a stand rather than trailer (its been stationary) for Ann's parents sailbooat. More on that later.

I kept the boat at a cabin that I owned with my brother-in-law until around the time that he became my ex-brother-law, then I took it to the farm. It’s the one down there now that Ann likes to use to take out past the moss on the pond and catch bass. The little Mercury sat for a long time after we got the Basstracker, but a few years ago I got it out, and a friend got it running good enough to sell it for a few hundred dollars.

The Basstracker had given us years of service, but when we took it to Mark Twain Lake last year, it wouldn’t rev up. I employed all of my mechanical expertise from three decades of experience (I changed the sparkplugs and cleaned the air filter), to no avail. When I got it back from the marina a few weeks later with a $700 repair bill (the magnet had come off the flywheel), I decided that if I was going to be paying to maintain a boat, I wanted a bigger one.

I didn’t immediately miss the Basstracker when we sold it earlier this summer, and renting the pontoon at Mark Twain Lake worked out OK, but I didn’t like the feeling of no longer having the ability to access to the Missouri River. So I stepped up my boat shopping, looking for a the magic boat the could haul two families, but still fit in a garage 23 ½ feet long, with an 8-foot door and 6’5” of clearance at the door (6’ 3” of clearance under the I-beam in the middle). And I’d like to keep it under $4,000.

I found it on Craigslist in a 1979 17-foot Ozark openbow with a 140 h.p. Mercruiser. Our first inboard, our first fiberglass boat, and a 115 h.p. upgrade.

Buying it was exciting, but I had enough experience with boats to know that I wasn’t really buying a boat, but a boating starter kit that would require some work before I had a boat. In boat years, this girl should have retired several years ago.

The first time we fired it up, it ran… for a couple of seconds. Then we couldn’t start it again. But one week and $1,000+ at the marina later, we were off. And we love it. It’s already had us out on the Missouri River three times, and we’re not done this year yet.