No More Boat Stories - corrected, clarified

I know ya'll get tired of hearing about boats. So tonight there'll be no boat metaphors of any kind. At all.


Read somewhere that the first thing you should do after buying a boat is install the biggest, brightest, most outrageous navigation lights you can find. Coast Guard minimums require 1 mile visibility for boats under 40 feet and 2 miles for boats up to 65 feet.

That probably means under perfect, flawlessly clear conditions. Which seem to never happen. Never.

Yeah, so I drove Calypso to the courtesy dock Friday night for ORP's gig because afterward, I wanted to spend the night at Horseshoe Island.

Oh, I forgot to mention there's a tournament this weekend ... and every bass fisherman who successfully begged for his wife's permission to get outta the house is out on the lake looking to land The One That Got Jonah.

Those little tin skids and their OCD drivers are everywhere ... and all they're thinking about is (1) Where's the fish and (2) Where's my beer

So after chugging off from the dock I immediately noticed that without the moon overhead, nothing was visible through Calypso's windshield. I mean NOTHING ... it was like driving with a mud-caked windshield.

Calypso's got GPS, so I faithfully followed its track without question ... until I started seeing green and red lights ahead (which means, There's Another Boat Out There Somewhere). But how far? I quickly found out that what seemed like a Huge Yacht from a distance was nothing more than a bathtub with a couple of dim bulbs and two navigation lights on board.

No, I didn't hit 'em or run their silly boat over. But I did come close enough to smell their bait bucket. Or maybe it was their breath.

This week I'm installing big new nav lights on Calypso.

I want brighter, clearer, less ambiguous navigation signals from now on because I want anybody who might possibly be distracted pursuing their own passion to know well in advance Something huge and capable of turning their little raft upside down is coming in your direction so pay attention ... and get Hell out of the way.