Article by Capt. Mark Sampson
The other day I heard a
kid in a department store mentioning to his parents that they should get him a boat so he’ll have “something to do this summer”, to which his father replied that if he wants something to do he should “spend more time on the computer because maybe he’d learn something.” Hearing the exchange had me remembering some of the learning experiences I’ve had through my own boating career.
My first boat was a seven foot long Sportyak dingy. Actually it wasn’t officially “mine” - it was a family boat that we all used. But since my two younger siblings were too young to use it, and my older sister had very limited interest in boating, at the age of ten I pretty much commandeered the all-plastic vessel as my own and spent a couple summers rowing the tiny green and white bathtub around Ocean City’s back bay waters in hot pursuit of flounder, blowfish and any other edible creature I could capture. From that little boat, this kid learned some very important lessons, none the least of which is what happens when you take the easy route by paddling with the wind or current. It might be really easy to get to where you think you should go, but sooner or later you’ll have to turn around and struggle against the wind and current to get home. I also learned about prior planning; if you go crabbing, make sure to have a bucket to hold your catch because it’s no fun paddling home (against the current) with your bare feet up on the gunwales because you’ve got a dozen or so crabs crawling around the bottom of the boat.
My next command was a 14-foot McKee Craft. Again, it was a family boat, but after two years of service on the Sportyak, I decided it was my duty to take command of the new vessel. My younger brother didn’t think that was very fair, but didn’t argue the point - I was bigger than he. With a 25 Evinrude to push us along, I finally didn’t have to worry about fighting wind and tides, and with a little motor-well in front of the transom, I could forget my bucket and still have a place to contain anything I might capture. With that boat, I was able to plunder most of the bay and inlet waters, and I learned valuable lessons about how to get off sandbars, and what happens when you leave the dock “thinking” that you have enough fuel to get you down to the inlet and back before dark but you’re wrong and the current is going out hard! I also learned how bad a half dozen crabs can smell that sneak out of a motor-well and wedge themselves under the deck.
By the time I was a teenager, my father had purchased a 19-foot center console. Suddenly, the inlet was no longer a “boundary” but instead it became a “gateway” to offshore locations such as the Bass Grounds, Jackspot and the Fingers.
With a 60-gallon fuel tank, range was only restricted by weather and sea conditions, neither of which were very accurately reported at the time, so we had to rely on the “let’s poke our way out the inlet and see what it’s like” method to determine if we’d be able to fish on any particular day. I learned valuable lessons about what happens when you “get it wrong” and head offshore in a small boat on days when you should have stayed in the bay. On a small single engine boat equipped with nothing more than a CB radio and a depth finder, the ocean can be an intimidating place to be when you’re pounding your way home over mountainous waves. After running in so many good, bad, and ugly sea conditions, I learned a lot about respecting the ocean and not being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I also learned that if you forget your rain gear, a five-gallon bucket over your head will keep a hard rain from stinging your face, it just doesn’t do much for visibility and your ears will be ringing for the next couple of days.
When I made the quantum leap from 19-foot private boat to a 40-foot charter boat, I quickly learned that for every hour I fished, I’d spend at least two doing some kind of maintenance back at the dock or in the boatyard. Big boats are soooo much effort to keep up! The work can be expensive, dirty, and sometimes back-breaking, but there’s no getting around it if you want to protect your investment and have a vessel that will get you out and back safely without constantly being plagued by malfunctions or breakdowns. You’ve got to do whatever it takes to keep everything in top form. If anything, that boat has taught me the importance of “preventative maintenance” and how much better it is to locate and address potential issues before they turn into real problems out on the water. It also helps to really know a boat inside and out, all the systems, the parts, how everything is mounted, wired, interconnected, or isolated and have at least enough mechanical experience to perform minor bits of maintenance such as changing a water pump, replacing a fan belt, or removing a heat exchanger. Such abilities will not only save money that would otherwise be spent to have someone else do it, they can also help a boater get home under their own power if they have problems out on the water.
Boats are far from being toys. We often refer to them as “money-pits” and that’s probably a better description, but they sure do open up a world of opportunities and excitement and they teach us a lot of good stuff along the way. I hope that kid in the department store has the chance to spend more time on the water than in front of a computer screen this summer – I think he’ll learn more.
Captain Mark Sampson is an outdoor writer and captain of the charter boat “Fish Finder”, docked at the Ocean City Fishing Center.
