Oh, Spring, could you please be a kind season? We’ve been through so much this winter. As I am writing this, the last two days of weather have been so nice… sunny, warm, a perfect finish to the end of March and beginning of April… makes you want to dream about being on the boat and enjoying the sunshine. But then bam! Today is rainy, dreary, cold…ugh. I don’t mind working on days like this because there is nothing else to do, but the last two days were such a tease that it was so nice outside and I was in my office doing tax returns. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love my job. I enjoy coming here, even though I’m usually late every day. I’ve been at this job for 26 years. I’m so very lucky that I’m also able to take off a lot during the summer to enjoy our boats. It’s Passover and Easter this weekend and the weather isn’t looking so great at all for the next few days, but hopefully the weather will start to break next week. We have a 25′ Hydrasport that is finally going in the water tomorrow. It’s always in right around St. Patrick’s Day, but this year, the weather really did a number on being able to get it ready to go in.
As I ended my last article, I had written about the fact that we were on our third boat (in one season) since we started boating – a 25′ 1998 Stamas. We purchased it at the end of 1998, but didn’t take delivery until March of 1999. If you have read my earlier articles about how we went through boats so quickly that first year we started boating, you wouldn’t be so surprised when I tell you that we also only had this boat for one season as well.
But what a fun season it was! Jay was so excited when we got it…he just loved this boat. He had done so much research on it before we purchased it because he wanted the perfect riding fishing boat. He even talked about it for months, waiting for the weather to break. Well, I guess he didn’t love it THAT much because we didn’t have it very long. But it did serve us well for one year. We started using her as soon as she hit the water in March. Jay spent a lot of time out fishing on her with our friend Joe. We caught a lot of fish during the boating season on her. I can’t believe I actually took off from work to go fishing in March…now I want to cry if I have to go outside when the temperature is under forty degrees.
We split our time on the boat that summer between Garbage/Gilgo Cove and Watch Hill, Fire Island. Our trusty sidekick, golden retriever Dakota, was always with us. He just loved the boat and being with us. When we were on the anchor at Gilgo, the boat was perfect for him because the cockpit was open and gave him so much room to hang out in. He was also like the King – he would sit on the back seat and chill. He had his aqua dog life preserver…if you were in the water, he was in the water. However, don’t get too close to him because he wants to use your body as a climbing post – you come out of the water with multiple scratches all over.
One weekend, we were all at the anchor at Gilgo – Joe, Janet, the Boys, Keith and his dog, a golden retriever named Abby. Our boats were all tied up together – Keith (he had an Osprey pilot houseboat) on one side of us, Joe and Janet on the other. Well, I woke up in the middle of the night to find that Dakota was gone from the boat cabin. The cabin door wasn’t even open… I freaked out – I know how he loved swimming off the boat, what if he had jumped in and he was gone? I pushed open the door and he wasn’t in the cockpit either. My heart sank…I kept scanning the water for him at first, but then I saw him. Somehow, he must have pushed his way out of the cabin door and it must have closed just enough to look like it was shut. There he was on the back of Keith’s boat…he had jumped off of ours onto Keith’s to see Abby. There he was, just sitting in the cockpit of the boat looking up at her – she was just sitting at the dinette looking down at him like “is it time to play?”. After that, we made certain that the cabin door was closed pretty good at night.
The Stamas had a single aft cabin with a light in it that looked like a submarine light. We used it mostly for the storage of our bags because it was such a tight fit. Well, sometimes there was just not enough room for us and a 70-pound golden retriever on the front bed, so one night I decided that I would go sleep in the back aft. How bad could it be? I wasn’t claustrophobic – well, at that time, at least I wasn’t. It was actually pretty cool with the light and I didn’t mind sleeping back there. However, when it was time to get out in the morning, it was a totally different story. Getting in was the easy part – getting out was totally different. Of course, panic sets in. How the heck was I going to get out? Every which way I tried to move to get out just made it worse and of course, I started to have a panic attack. Finally, after talking myself down off the ledge and calming down a bit, I was finally able to get out. As you can only imagine, that was the only time I ever slept back there.
Going to Watch Hill Fire Island on her was always an experience – she was a great riding boat and we always had a wonderful trip, but Dakota never wanted to be far from anyone. The boat had two single pedestal seats – the one at the helm for Jay and the passenger one for Dakota and me. Every trip, he would sit on my lap. Not so bad in the beginning, but after a two-hour trip from our marina with a 70-pound dog on your lap, it got a little uncomfortable. And then there was the time that he got seasick as soon as we pulled into the marina….
The Stamas was our first outboard boat. It wasn’t an issue at our dock or if we went to any restaurants because there were docks on either side of the boat to get off. However, at Watch Hill, there aren’t any, so it was a little difficult getting on and off the boat. Jay built a ramp for Dakota and I to get on and off. And it literally was just that – a ramp. It was a piece of wood that he covered with a piece of carpet – no sides, no railings, just a flat piece of wood. Good thing that I was young and not so nervous back then, because if that was today, I would be like ha ha you’re funny that isn’t ever happening…EVER.
That boat treated us very well that season. We were sad to see her go, but we decided we needed a bigger boat and needed to go back to something with more creature comforts. We sold her to Keith’s friend, so we did get to see her for a while afterwards. Joe and Janet also moved up from their boat at the end of that year…they traded in the Sport Craft Bounty Hunter for a Rinker 242 Fiesta Vee. Our next vessel would be a 2000 290 Crownline. I still think about that boat to this day…it’s kind of silly, but of all of our boats, that one had the best shower ever.
When we tell people that we have had well over 20 years since we started boating in 1998, they sometimes don’t believe us. But what they also don’t always know is that in the beginning, we had a new one (or two or three) every single season. Let the funny Crownline stories begin! Oh, the memories…