but first, a little back story......

[charlie_the_tuna]

this might turn out to be a bit long winded, so if you dont have the time or the patience.... bail now.
my father was on the water almost his whole life. he bought a little outboard motor at 15 or so and he used to get on the subway at coney island, his home, and carry that little outboard to sheepshead bay, where he would rent a little skiff for the day and fish his a$$ off. needless to say, i was pretty much born on the water.
now some of you old timers know, i sold my V to a member, a few years back and i'm currently looking at picking up another one. in fact, it's from another member. he's working through some pretty heavy personal issues so i'm gonna give him space until he's ready to make this happen.
in the mean time, i've been trying to get my fix in other ways. i live in long beach, ny, which is basically a sandbar on the south shore of long island. maybe 300 yards at it's widest and 6 miles long, tops. bay on one side and atlantic on the other. close enough to smell and hear the ocean from my house. we have a beautiful boardwalk of 2.2 miles, right on the ocean, so i can often be found riding my bike up there for sun and exercise. tons of fish in the surf as well as the bay, which is also a couple hundred yards from my house. also, we have a fishing pier and a boat ramp right down the block. i can often be found along the bay (reynold's channel) sitting on a bench, under a shade tree, watching the boat traffic cruise by.
one of the points of this post is sometimes, i'll watch videos of haulover inlet on my giant TV and watch some of these incredible morons get thrashed around by this formidable waterway. my father always said, any schmuck with $10,000 can buy a boat. i see that more and more. so i'm watching a 10 minute video of these idiots and at about minute 9, a really clean center console V comes rolling through. white bimini with a merc on the back. and i could swear, it was mounted on an omc seadrive bracket. i cant be 100% sure, but dam! that's what it looked like to me. needless to say, the poor little V was getting tossed around pretty good.
if you guys have never watched these videos, you'll see everything from 12 foot jet boats to 60 foot monsters with 6 on the back. sometimes i'll watch them for an hour or more. it's a lot of fun watching some of these qualified captains get their a$$e$ handed to them. so now that i've reached this point in my post, i realize i didnt really have a point. just doing a bit of typing on a sunday morning, before i get ready to go for a bike ride on the boardwalk, then get ready to do all the things the boss requires of me.
so that's about it.
LATER!!!

[Blue_Runner]

Boats vs. Haulover Inlet is some of the best entertainment on Youtube. I enjoyed the back story post Charlie. Your dad was hard core to do that!

[Destroyer]

Way back in the 60's I used to do something similar. I had a 7.5 hp Elgin engine that I would take with me to a rowboat rental place in Barnaget Bay near Seaside, NJ. My dad and I would drop about 12-15 crab traps in a big circle with Styrofoam floats tied to the line. Then spend hours going from trap to trap hauling them up. We would usually get about a bushel full of nice blue claws that mom and my wife would magically transform into some of the best crab cakes and crab salad this side of heaven. That old Elgin just kept purring along. Dad and I would take turns steering while the other person would haul up the traps. Just thinking about it brings back so many great memories. Thanks Charlie for the reminder. Great story.

[bgreene]

1973 dad bought new 9.5 hp Evinrude sportwin that we’d hook to rented rowboats, Shinnickock Bay, and Peconic. I sold that motor still in near mint condition to a family just last year.

Charlie ...thanks for your post.

[pjbrownva]

Great stories.

I had a little 2 HP evinrude... it went on an 11 foot jon boat that I used on a lake in MASS.

I still have the motor... but haven't tried to run it in about 15 years or more... who knows, maybe it would work?

I still have the jon boat too... but whenever I'm in MA, I usually borrow a neighbor's canoe instead.

I've had that motor and boat since I was about 12. My cousin and I would spend all day and half the evening drifting and moving around on the lake, fishing. Sun fish, crappie, white perch.

It was a peaceful time, and a good childhood / upbringing.

Nothing to work about. Get up. Eat some cereal and a muffin, and go fishing for the whole day.

Thanks for sharing your memories, Charlie. It's nice that you still get out and enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of the water.

-Philip

[scook]

This thread should be renamed Memory Lane. In the 50’s my dad bought a new Johnson 5 1/2 horse outboard and he’d rent a 16’ heavy plywood boat and take me fishing in Puget Sound. Thinking back, I’m amazed that the little motor got that boat up on plane. We trolled all over while the salmon finned their noses at us - I never caught one (got one to the boat once), but one time, I caught a bunch of perch from the beach when we stopped for lunch. Great memories - thanks Charlie.