Boating: Pontoon boats are relative-ly OK to some
I must admit to being a boating snob -most definitely a Boston Whaler snob. I even owned a 20-foot Whaler sailboat that most boaters don’t think ever existed.
I’ve always had something good to say about most boats although several sailboats, including the first S2’s, were disasters. I’ve never had much to say good about the unfinished fiberglass boats with dark speckles inside some call ‘snot’ boats, but they have a price that most new boaters can afford.
My all-time least favorite boat style has, or I should say, had been the aluminum pontoon boat. In my youth, I rented them to novice boaters on a small lake in Pennsyltucky. I had to repair them constantly. When I first reached Florida I assumed that style boat would be illegal and the first one I passed on the open water startled me.
The only good thing about a pontoon boat, I have always said, was that they could float so many people but their capacity is often exceeded because that is human nature. Even this stable platform can capsize if its capacity is exceeded. That is why they are restricted to the Back Bay by local rental companies and the capacity plate is so prominently displayed.
It is not easy for me to admit to being wrong because I am wrong so infrequently but here goes. A relative, Cousin Tom, has forced me to spend time on one of those awkward behemoth, 23-foot pontoons. I grudgingly admit that there is more square feet on this 23 footer than I had in my first college dorm or most efficiencies apartments anywhere in Manhattan, today.
Am I suddenly a convert to pontoon-ism, no! Are they UN-American, as I’ve said in the past, no! They are a party barge! With that much seating capacity, it is a natural for a dozen or so friends to meander around the protected waterways or hide behind some island and pretend to fish.
Cousin Tom showed up last month with his motor home, pontoon boat, new wife and dog. I think he wanted to park it all in our driveway for a few months. This is where networking comes in handy. I was able to find him a ‘pad’ in a local RV park and a place to store the boat trailer. I couldn’t convince him not to tie up his pontoon boat to my dock.
Cousin Tom was always very distant both by geography and attitude but he changed during the divorce from his wife Dora-jean. She caught him cheating, and he went to pieces. In a misguided moment at a ‘Divorce Avoidance’ group, he revealed the other dozen or so affairs.
His new wife is nice but she doesn’t cook, smokes skinny cigars and drinks umbrella cocktails on the pontoon boat. I am sure the attraction, for him, is her Farrah Fawcett-ish hair. In other words she is high maintenance and low class.
Cousin Tom insisted on inviting every person on the canal when they came out on the dock to laugh at me as we went slowly by. They all declined, some ungraciously while others just laughed. “Relative,” is all I had to say. We all have occasional visits from the distant relatives.
Even with the hard top up there was no place for me to hide. My wife went along with her good nature and Christian charity. Despite my pleadings, ‘CT’ docked at Commodore Jim’s house and personally invited him to board his party barge. He held up a cheap bottle of white wine and the 12-volt blender full of red stuff.
When the Commodore realized that it wasn’t a joke, he said, “Not if I was whipped bloody and hog-tied!” My hysterical laughter reflected my agreement and a nervous energy release.
We left the canal and puttered around the mangroves and sandbars. Pontoon boats don’t push off sandbars easily and the attempt at docking was nearly disastrous. It was apparent he had never encountered tides before. I consoled him by reminding him that he had lived in a state infamous for terrible drivers and some of their bad habits must have rubbed off on him.
Well that did it because they’re gone. I miss his dog, but that’s all. The appreciation of aluminum pontoon boats might be residual because, beside the dog, the boat was the only other entity that was tolerable.
(ITALICS) Boatguy Ed is a retired bottom paint maker and is currently a volunteer extra, grip, lighting setter and coffee go-fer, on his son’s Boater’s Treasures television show, www.boaterstreasures.com. Send comments to boatguiEd@aol.com or I’ll come to your house!