Boating: Fort Myers has one of the premier Florida shows
On the way back from the Fort Lauderdale boat show aboard the “Dead End Canal Yacht Club” chartered bus, the only bathroom on board malfunctioned. We had to make stops at the Indian reservation and the two rest stops on Alligator Alley. We could have turned off the beer tap or crawled up under the bus to check out the broken head but no one objected to the stops or volunteered to re-build the head.
There was as much snoring going on the 2 1/2 hour trip as beer drinking because we were all exhausted from the day trip to one of the biggest boat shows in the country.
We had tired ourselves out with three hours of hard charging around the show. After that, most of us ate lunch at the food courts and took up crowd watching.
We especially enjoy the silicone Barbies on the arms of the really old dudes. “Way to go you old son-of-a-gun,” ‘Hollywood Harry’ would shout from the food court tables. He was younger than most of the men sporting the cuties and applauded the audacity of his fellow show-offs.
“It’s a great place to get lost in,” said ‘New Jersey Jerry’ surveying the convoluted spectacle before him,” but I like small shows like our Fort Myers Fall show. It’s just the right size!” We vowed never to go back to the humongous Fort Lauderdale boat show on a Saturday.
“It’s plenty big,” argued ‘Panhandle Pete’, “they got a whole bunch of boats in the water and that convention hall is packed full of booths with a bunch of stuff!”
Pete is right about the size. Fort Myers has one of the premier Florida shows. The Southwest Florida Marine Industries Association has been at it for 37 years. This years show may not be as big, like the Fort Lauderdale show, but plenty of quality boats and accessories will be on display.
Lets face it, the economy stinks and the boat usage has declined but we die hard boaters will find a way to stay on the water. A lot of our members in the “Dead End Canal Yacht Club” are now practicing ‘rotating boat usage’. Simply put; we use your boat this trip and my boat next trip. It is a way to keep our boats in play and justify to the rest of our families the cost of keeping up a boat.
“I used to have a boat,” is the most frequent phrase I hear from people who come up to me to say hello or comment or complain. I always reply, “That’s too bad,” because I know the look on their faces mean they will never have a boat again. Why not, a million reasons but more likely it stems from not having anyone to go boating with.
There that old boat sat and collected dust or storage bills or grew barnacles until it wouldn’t move. There was some logic, at the right moment for selling it? “Why’d you sell it,” I’d ask and they would go down the check list. There is never any eye contact when they recite that litany and despite their expression of optimism that they will, once again have a boat, deep inside they know that the battle once won, will never be fought again.
And yet we live in the most bountiful paradise for boaters in the nation. We are within reach of plenty ‘nook and cranny’ fishing holes, more waterfront restaurants than one can imagine and protected inter-coastal cruising water ways. From our home base we can go all the way across the state in a small boat and then up to St. Augustine or down to Miami. But just because we live in such a wonderland doesn’t mean we don’t have to work at justifying keeping our boat or buying a new one.
Working hard means using the boat. Whenever your partners enters your space waving the monthly storage bill, you should interrupt and ask if she and her girlfriends wouldn’t like a trip to watch the sunset.
“It’s so beautiful this time of year?” Unless she is a stone-hearted boat hater she will jump on the phone and organize the outing. And you dodged the bullet for another month.
Can anyone really justify the cost of our hobbies? Golf and boating are stress relievers. Well maybe not the way I play golf but you get my drift. There are more old boaters than old Doctors unless they were boaters, too! Nothing is so peaceful as drifting along a sparking bay on a cloudless day with a fishing pole in your hand and no bait on the hook!
Don’t forget to invite your significant other to the 37th Annual Fort Myers Fall show Nov. 12-15. Save a little of the boat money for a short walk to the revitalized downtown area for a lunch or a happy hour drink. It’s all part of ‘working’ to get and keep the loves of your life.
(ITALICS) See the boatguys at booth B/H 003. boatguiEd@aol.com