THE BOAT

 

You might wonder why I would title a blog “The Boat”.  Simply because there is this one particular boat that represented the fork in the road for me. 

I was a junior in high school.  Our family had fallen in love with Newport Beach.  What had been a vacation spot for us became our permanent home several years before.  My love affair with the ocean and everything oceanic had long since kicked in.  For someone like me I was in paradise. 

At that time, much more so than now, there was little doubt as to the maritime nature of our beautiful harbor.  A few years earlier there were boatyards turning out vessels for the Navy.  Some of the coasts busiest sport fishing landings were based here and were the lifeblood for  restaurants, fishing and marine supply stores, fuel docks and a host of other businesses.  There was a cannery for the commercial fishing fleet that was busy 24 hours a day.  Surfing was still at the stage where locals were very territorial but it was obvious the boom was on.  And Easter Week in Newport Beach was standing room only.  Like I said, this was Nirvana.

We were fortunate enough to have a fishing boat at the time.  My Mom and 2 sisters were not quite as smitten by the ocean as me, my Dad and brother were so they stayed home while we  fished for white sea bass and yellowtail in the spring and albacore and marlin in the summer.  I loved fishing with my Dad.  Working as hard as he had all his life he enjoyed our days on the ocean.  Early on, he let us handle the boat, do the navigating and taught us to leave her spic and span after a day’s fishing. 

I began to think that I wanted to make a career of being a fisherman.  I had made an albacore trip with a high school buddy of mine who was a 3^rd generation commercial fisherman.  We picked up a couple of transients off the wharf to complete our crew and fished some 100 miles off shore until our 8 ton hold was full.  I loved it.

I talked to my Dad about my desires.  He knew how strongly I felt.  We began to scour the waterfront and watch the papers for a boat.  One morning Dad said he had seen a boat advertised for sale in the local paper.  We called the owner and arranged to go see her (the boat was the “her”, not the owner). 

It was love at first sight.  She was a 42 foot Monterey.  The Monterey is a famous double-ender design that was popular at the time, particularly as a jig boat for albacore fishing.  That means that you use outriggers to pull 8 to 10 jigs at one time.  The owner showed us every inch of his boat, his passion for her obvious.  He was retiring from a life at sea. 

You may think it is hard to love a boat but you would be mistaken.  He had loved her for the life they had spent together.  I loved her for the life I could imagine.  I talked things over with my Dad and he consented to me making an offer for the boat.  I had saved up $7,500 from working as a fry cook in a local beachfront café.  I also had a 1957 Chevy.  I made an appointment to see the seller and made my offer; my Chevy plus $7,500.  He said he would get back to me.  The next day he called.  He explained that because he was retiring he needed cash much more than he needed a car.  No deal. 

I was crushed at the time.  I look back now and see this as the fork in the road I mentioned earlier.  If I had bought the boat I would have begun a life making a living at sea.  While that itself was appealing there are some aspects of that life that are not, like being gone from home.  That is a big one for me.  I most likely would not have met my precious Terry and God knows what my family would have been like. 

The road I did take led to a life designed by God for me.  I could not have dreamed anything better.