Sport: Boat Fever

• Share

(8 of 9)

"When I see a motorboat coming," says one shaky sailor from Baltimore, "I say to myself, I am a sailboat; I have the right of way. Then I get the hell out of there." Investment Banker Julian K. Roosevelt (of the Oyster Bay Roosevelts) recalls the day on Long Island Sound when a power boat pulled alongside his father's 60-ft. schooner Mistress. The intruder bellowed: "Hey, Mac! Which way to port Jefferson?" Says Roosevelt with deep satisfaction: "I answered him in his own way and said, 'First turn to your right, Mac!'" Harrumphs a fellow New York Yacht Club member: "I should have told the fellow to go straight down."

Hot Rods & Greenhorns. The boat boom has brought really only one great menace—the hot-rodder, inboard and outboard, whose feckless abandon yearly kills and maims scores of other boatmen and bathers. New federal and state laws are now tightening requirements on registration and demanding strict adherence to traffic rules. Better still is the growing organization of Coast Guard Auxiliary and Power Squadrons, which give free instruction in seamanship, successfully instill a sense of pride in new boat owners.

Despite this worthy education, the harried U.S. Coast Guard rescue squadrons have more trouble than they can handle, and it gets worse every year. Says one Coast Guard commander wearily: "They run aground, they run into buoys, they run into each other. They overload small boats and they go too fast. If they have enough gas to go eight miles, they'll go eight miles straight out and then have to be brought in." Last year a Coast Guard boat chugged out to rescue a man whose brand-new, 36-ft. cruiser had broken down. The rescuers tossed him a towline, whereupon the stalled skipper triumphantly tied it around his waist and hollered "Let's go!" One of the classic invitations to trouble comes for the outboard owner when the engine quits. The owner lunges to the stern to fix it. His added weight brings the transom, already too low in the water, lower still. A five-gallon wave (roughly 50 lbs.) slops aboard. The next wave comes in easier, and the boat swamps.*

Sparkplugs & Silver. The majority of the U.S.'s new sailors are a happy, capable crew who are willing to suffer minor discomforts for the sake of new discoveries. Waiting for them are thousands of miles of unexplored regions—the Great Lakes, Lake Champlain, San Francisco's Bay, New England's coves, New Orleans' delta. Wherever they go, they find others like themselves, eager to share possessions and experiences. Marinas, yachtels and boatels welcome them with everything from ice to beer to sparkplugs to diapers. Cruising families suddenly find that children are better behaved than they were at home, and even other people somehow look nicer—good enough to wave at. They can search the primitive labyrinthine waters of Florida's Everglades, wake to the spontaneous burst of sound and color of the Mangrove Coast, where thousands of roosting ibis, egrets, anhingas and spoonbills toy, and where silver tarpon jump by moonlight and coons and otters feed and play. They fish under the dawn-pink sky out of San Diego, and in the cool basins of the Colorado mountains. And they can just laze.