Falling in Love With Boating

Discovering a love for boating can happen at an early age. Tim Bower

I was probably a preteen when my father and I were guests of the older son of family friends. The son owned a fast, gold metal-flake speedboat, probably a Glastron. On its transom hung a towering pair of 100 hp Mercs. We spent an afternoon on Green Lake just zooming around, hunting for other speedboats to race. We never lost one of those impromptu speed trials, even to the guy in something called a Donzi. This introduced me to the thrill of speed for speed’s sake on a venue where there was no speed limit. Freedom, in other words.

I was in high school when I got invited to spend a summer afternoon at a classmate’s family lake cottage. There was a tri-hull runabout on the lift, and our host knew how to drive the boat, so she proposed that five or six of us cast off for a little water-skiing. I had never been towed behind a boat and was quite proud that I got up on my first try. Did a little sashay across the wakes, just to show off. When my turn was over, I retired to a cockpit full of happy, smiling girls in swimsuits, including our captain, a tall redhead I would pursue for years. Does life get any better? Not when you’re a 16-year-old boy.

Fast-forward about a decade. I’ve, quite improbably, joined the staff at Boating magazine; the boy-wonder assistant editor from Wisconsin lands in Manhattan. I soon find myself in the cockpit of a 24-foot center-console, heading out Government Cut at dawn for a run to Bimini for a boat-test session following the Miami Boat Show. For my first journey on salt water, I was paired with a real salt: the magazine’s editor, Doug Schryver. Soon enough, we were crossing the Gulf Stream and some big seas. I was instructed to steer on course while Doug throttled the single Mercury outboard as we climbed and descended thick swells. At one point, I recall looking to port and seeing nothing but a wall of green water, like I could touch it with my elbow. To starboard, I saw nothing but air. I felt like I was in a Hemingway story, or an episode of Victory at Sea. We arrived soaked to the skin, but I was thrilled and filled with newfound confidence.

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I landed my first job in the boat business completely by accident, answering a blind ad that turned out to be for a PR position at OMC/Evinrude/Johnson. When I worked at OMC, I had a colleague who, as a teenager, ran a 13-foot Speedliner solo from his home on Long Island to Miami to attend school. He had the boat but did not have a car. That’s passion! I’ve never felt the romantic devotion to the water that I saw in that guy. But, perhaps surprisingly, boating has defined my life. Lucky, huh?

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