A year ago Linda and I decided to invest spend a chunk of our disposable income on a boat. We had been making regular trips to Galveston to fish off the rocks, jetties and piers. The fishing was good and bad randomly, the time spent at the waters edge was always good (at least for me) the company we kept in those places, well, let’s just say they had alternate values. I had fishing to keep me busy, Linda had fewer distractions so it dawned on Linda first, “maybe there is a way we can still spend time on the water, go fishing and be mobile when our personal space was invaded”. The answer came to her like a discarded cigarette butt landing in your hair – A BOAT!
We bought a middle of the bay, 19 foot fishing boat, not to big, not to small, not new, not old. It turned out to be a pretty good choice. Now that we had our vessel, we were ready to learn and spend. In the beginning we did a fair job of compensating for our complete lack of experience with Patience and some basic intelligence. There were no major accidents or incidents. At some point you have to ramp up the experience level – translated – you have to make a mistake that teaches you not to do that again.
Our first real experience building block (if you don’t count the sweaty palms, close encounters with a mailbox and numerous “do overs” trying to back the boat up our driveway) was when Linda and I were launching out of Baytown. It was a fairly busy ramp but there was a break in the action, a window of opportunity. If we moved quickly we could get our boat in the water without being in the way of having someone impatiently wait for us. As you probably have guessed patience was the firs to go, intellect was trying to 
catch up fast. We got up to the ramp, got the boat into the water and I was headed to find one of the very few boat trailer parking spaces left. Everything was going according to plan, until . . . . . as I walked back to the boat Linda was in it waving her arms wildly trying to get my attention. She got it, but I didn’t know what she wanted so I started jogging to the boat ramp. About the same time I could hear Linda say something about “the plugs” I saw that the back of the boat was way lower than it was supposed to be. I forgot to put the plugs in the boat at it was filling up with water from the back!
I RAN back to the car, and tried to make my way back to the ramp without banging my trailer into the 17 other cars and trailers between me and my mini Titanic. Fortunately no one pulled into the spot where I needed to be to pick up the boat. As I have become more experienced I understand how lucky I was that some yahoo didn’t try to launch in the same spot. With difficulty we got the boat back on the trailer and I pulled a little way up the ramp so the water would drain out. It seemed like it took an hour. It was probably only about 10 minutes but not only were we in peoples way but every single person who came and went on either side of us knew exactly what happened. I was embarrassed and mad at myself for making the mistake. I don’t ever want to do that again.
This was only one of many lessons learned. I could tell you about the time I had to paddle for about 45 min or when I got beached and had to jump out and push or even when I got caught in the fog and almost pooped my pants and turned Katie and I into fish food. But even then you would know less than half the story. I would also have to tell you about all the things I learned about handling a boat, navigation, working on an outboard, finding fishing spots and spending time on the water with my family and friends. For example, did you know a baloney and cheese sandwich tastes 3.7 times better on your boat than in your kitchen? It’s true.
After 1 year, we learned we are really glad we got a boat. I hope the trend continues, I still have plenty of mistakes to make and I have this theory about grilled cheese sandwiches that I want to test out.