Sport: Boat Fever

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Believe me, my young friend, [said the Water Rat solemnly], there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing . . . Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular . . .

—The Wind in the Willows

Twombley's boatyard in South Yarmouth, Me. is redolent of clam flats and hot tar, rife with the cries of greedy gulls and little children. At dockside, where scores of boat owners are polishing, scraping and painting, a World War II veteran, paralyzed from the waist down, rolls up to his 32-ft. cruiser in his wheelchair, pulls himself aboard, finds his screwdriver and gets to work.

At the Potomac's Columbia Island Marina, pleasure boats bake like muffins in the sun. Women in shorts and bare-chested men sweat over engines, hulls and brightwork. Strung along the docks here and there, families perch like terns as they munch their sandwiches, while over at the launching ramp, a black-and-white Pontiac with a black-and-white outboard runabout in tow backs tortuously toward the water. Pontiac and runabout have matching upholstery, matching fins, matching wraparound windshields.

Behind a tiny row house in Baltimore, a boatman scours his homemade runabout with steel wool, oblivious to neighborly wisecracks ("Where you gonna get two of every animal, Henry?"). At Cleveland's Yachting Club, a big woman in small slacks mounts the ladder of a cruiser, hoists a heavy box of tools, inches into the cabin to repair the head.

In Freeport, L.I., a commuter stops off at a boatyard for a quick look at his newly bought 26-ft. cruiser, admires her lines with the air of Michelangelo studying the Sistine Chapel ceiling. In a Chicago boatyard, a bandanna-hooded woman sprawls beneath her boat to apply a coat of copper paint. In St. Paul, seven families buy seven new houseboats, begin the 322-mile homeward trip down the Mississippi to Clinton, Iowa. In Seattle, 1,000 boat owners, burgees and pennants flapping, parade from Lake Union to Lake Washington to herald the opening of the new season.

Status with a Splash. These last week were typical members of the new fast-growing brotherhood of the sea. In Florida and Kentucky, in Illinois and Texas, in Oregon and Nevada and Georgia—wherever land stops and water begins, and even where the water's edge is a day's journey—U.S. families were caught with boat fever. The sport that 20 years ago was confined largely to fishermen and the rich has become a pastime enjoyed by some 40 million U.S. citizens. In just twelve years the number of boats that churn the U.S.'s waterways has more than tripled, from 2,500,000 to nearly 8,000,000. And the boom is still growing. The estimated $2.5 billion that boat lovers will spend this year will be just twice the amount they shelled out three years ago in pursuit of the nation's biggest, splashiest new pastime.