Article by Capt. Franky Pettolina
Now I don’t know about you, but I have a small outlet store’s inventory of boating and fishing t-shirts. I literally own somewhere around five hundred t-shirts. Boat t-shirts, tournament t-shirts, marina t-shirts, fishing club t-shirts, fishing bar t-shirts, marine business t-shirts. You name it, if it is boating or fishing related I probably have a t-shirt representing it.
And these shirts are broken down into different categories. There are long sleeve T’s for the winter nights and formal evening wear. Some of my buddies like the long sleeves to cover up from the sun, but my internal thermostat doesn’t handle such coverage on those hot days, so I reserve my long sleeves for cooler climate or when I need to dress up. I have a plethora of white and colored short sleeve T’s that serve as summertime casual attire.
Then I have my white, short sleeve, day drinking summertime T-shirts. The dress code for when I have a rare day off is usually made up of the T-shirts of boats other than our charter boat, “Last Call”. Dad always said I should wear one of our competitor’s shirts if I am gonna head out partying. That way if I have a few too many and end up dancing with a minnow bucket on my noggin people might think I belong to one of those other charter operations. Not too sure if that is a solid plan or not, but you have to do what your Daddy tells ya!
The next batch of shirts is work and fishing wear. This is a complicated pile of shirts. I have my Pettolina Marine Surveying Shirts for my days spent inspecting boats. I also have a dedicated batch of shirts that are on their last leg as far as stains and tears. These are saved for boat maintenance days. When it comes to fishing shirts, I have “Last Call” T’s for when I am on my own boat, or some tournament or random boat T when I am on a different boat. Most of these are past their prime as far as summertime casual or day-off day drinking wear. The necklines are a little frayed and there may be a fish blood stain or two on them. As you can probably tell, laundry sorting day is a bit tricky when it comes to my T-shirt collection. And I still haven’t mentioned my last two categories of T-shirts.
The first of these last two categories is what I refer to as my memorabilia shirts. These are T-shirts that I do not, under any circumstance, take out of the closet, let alone wear out anywhere. Why own a shirt that I won’t wear you ask? One simple reason. I can not replace it. The boat or the marina is gone. Or the shirt represents a bygone era of our sport. I have T-shirts from marinas I stayed at in Venezuela in the 90s. I wouldn’t even venture to Venezuela these days and I know these particular marinas are no longer in existence. I have a shirt that I am particularly fond of that was made by Bill Buckland’s Fisherman’s Center in Palm Beach. This one featured a ballyhoo head on a hook and the phrase “Oh No Sancocho! How many will there be in 96?” and the names of the hot Mexican billfishing destinations of Isla Mujeres (Isla), Puerto Aventuras (PA), Cozumel (Coz), and Cancun (Hacienda del Mar). For those of you not familiar with the term Sancocho, it is fisherman slang for when we try to hook a billfish and fail. You get back just the head of the bait on your hook. And for you folks that need to question origins, a type of soup common in Latin countries is Sancocho de Pescado which is made by boiling fish heads in water. And the “How many will there be in 96?” was a spoof on an ad campaign the Billfish Foundation was using back then which had a picture of a billfish and the question “How many will there be in 2001?” Releasing billfish, especially blue marlin, was just becoming the norm rather than the exception in the late 80s/early 90s and The Billfish Foundation was one of the driving forces behind that movement. Thankfully, 2001 has come and gone and we still have plenty of billfish, and unfortunately I know firsthand that there were plenty of Sancochos in Mexico in the mid 90s! I am not quite sure what I am going to do with these shirts. I keep threatening to epoxy coat them onto bar stools or have them matted and framed. I have also heard from a friend of mine that there is a seamstress that will make old T’s into a blanket. My wife is not too fond of any of those options, so for now the shirts will stay safely tucked away in the closet.
The last of my T-shirt subdivisions is the Lucky Shirt. These are the shirts that I save for tournament fishing only. I have about 5 of these shirts. One is a shirt my buddy had made for his boat the “Reel Thirsty”. The image on the back looks nothing like the boat and the pocket has a Jabberjaws looking shark on it. He no longer has the boat, but I swear the shirt brings me good mojo. Another of my lucky shirts just so happens to be one of the last existing shirts for a boat called the “Paper Boy”. Without fail I wear this shirt on my last fishing day of multi-day tourneys. I know it brings me luck. As proof I cite my recent mahi trophies in the Canyon Kick Off Tournament. You can’t see it in the picture, but I am proudly wearing the “Paper Boy” shirt. How did I come across this lucky shirt you wonder? A certain Editor/Publisher/Grand Poobah of a certain paper currently in your hands happens to own a boat called the “Paper Boy” so I will let you sort it out.
If any of you, my loyal readers, wants to contribute to my T-shirt addiction, err collection, I gladly accept XXL shirts and they can be dropped off at the “Last Call”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center or at the Coastal Fisherman office on Sunset Avenue in West Ocean City. Who knows, down the road I may be writing about your shirt in this very column!
Capt. Franky Pettolina is Co-Captain of the charter boat, “Last Call” and President of the Ocean City Marlin Club.
