I have loved powerboats since I was about three years old. When I was a toddler my aunt bought me a toy which was a small scale model of a wooden runabout with little battery-powered outboard motor. I used to play with it in the bathtub all the time. Many of the boats around our summer cottage on Lake Erie were kept in boat lifts when they weren’t being used. I made a lift for my toy boat out of an upside down foot stool with string tied across the legs for slings. My very first “real” boat was a little red wooden craft made by a local carpenter, perhaps four and one half feet long, and I passed many a hot summer day floating around in that little boat in Lake Erie. I think I was about five or six when my parents bought me a used 10’ Feathercraft aluminum boat, the boat which later became the legendary “Raging African Queen,” and therein began my serious boating career. I have had many boats since, but that Feathercraft aluminum dinghy was the boat I loved the most.
Funny how some memories stick with you. I remember the day they bought it used, from a man on the next bay. The details are sketchy, but I remember seeing it floating in the water, and I remember the excitement I felt. I now owned a boat, which I could row and in which I could carry several other passengers. I loved that little dinghy. Over the next thirty years, that boat would have five very different outboard motors. The first motor my father came home with was a small outboard that one of his friends had given him. It was an Italian motor called a Girelli, and it was probably one of the first jet-propelled outboards. The friend had bought it for duck hunting, because he thought that, being prop-less, it would be good in the weeds. It was not, and it was an entirely unsatisfactory motor on all counts. It was heavy, hard to start, loud, slow, and every so often let out a backfire that shot flames though the end of its pistol grip. I was afraid of that motor and it did not last long. The next motor was my favourite. It was a 1961(+-) Johnson 5 1/2HP and I owned that motor through most of my youth. It always started with one or two pulls, and with that motor I travelled hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, through some very rough seas. Regrettably, it was stolen one summer many years ago. The next two motors were about as bad as that first Girelli. One, I bought on a whim from a used outboard shop. It was a 1953 5HP Scott Atwater “Bail-O-Matic” (see above photo) and it was a noisy bucket of bolts that spit oil, took about fifty pulls to start, if it started at all, and was loud enough to wake the dead. My friends all made fun of me, but I suppose that motor paid for itself in the amusing stories it generated. We nicknamed it “Bobo” which was an allusion to a joke about sodomy. My antique outboard phase was short-lived. The next outboard was a 1980s Evinrude 4HP which was an awful motor, had a poorly designed throttle lever, and a pull cord that periodically broke. I beat the crap out of that motor, sold it, then bought the motor I’ve had for the past fifteen years, a very reliable Yamaha 3hp.
Finally, the story of how the “Raging African Queen” came to be named. Over the years, the Feathercraft went by several names. When I was a boy, I named it “Wasp” after the aircraft carrier. It then became the “Asp”. Years later, and shortly before Bobo met its untimely demise (I did keep the engine cover which I now use for a unique lampshade), one of my artist friends, who happens to be gay, decided that he would paint a new name on the transom, in yellow Rust-o-leum. We’d been joking about renaming it “The African Queen”, and someone (not me) decided that “The Raging African Queen” was an even better name. Before I knew it, there was my artist friend Peter, painting that name on the back of the boat. Rust-o-leum is forever. The name, like the paint, stuck, and from then on, this legendary aluminium boat, which I’d now owned for over thirty years, and which was still providing us with hours of boating fun, became affectionately referred to as “the Queen”. A while ago, it too was stolen off our beach, and I was crestfallen. The idea that someone would steal a boat with that name painted on the transom is unbelievable to me, but someone did. We did some pretty silly things with and in that boat. I distinctly remember one night, with several other passengers aboard, probably somewhat intoxicated, driving that boat around half full of water. At one point, I had to jump out of the boat in waist deep water and rescue the motor before the ship went down. One of my favorite boat photos is a rear shot of the Queen, pulled up on shore, Bobo mounted on the transom, covered in seaweed, tar, and other lake grime. Boating with attitude. I keep hoping that someday the Queen will resurface, but now, these many years later, I think the prospects are slim. Funny, the things we hold dear in life.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Funny how some memories stick with you. I remember the day they bought it used, from a man on the next bay. The details are sketchy, but I remember seeing it floating in the water, and I remember the excitement I felt. I now owned a boat, which I could row and in which I could carry several other passengers. I loved that little dinghy. Over the next thirty years, that boat would have five very different outboard motors. The first motor my father came home with was a small outboard that one of his friends had given him. It was an Italian motor called a Girelli, and it was probably one of the first jet-propelled outboards. The friend had bought it for duck hunting, because he thought that, being prop-less, it would be good in the weeds. It was not, and it was an entirely unsatisfactory motor on all counts. It was heavy, hard to start, loud, slow, and every so often let out a backfire that shot flames though the end of its pistol grip. I was afraid of that motor and it did not last long. The next motor was my favourite. It was a 1961(+-) Johnson 5 1/2HP and I owned that motor through most of my youth. It always started with one or two pulls, and with that motor I travelled hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles, through some very rough seas. Regrettably, it was stolen one summer many years ago. The next two motors were about as bad as that first Girelli. One, I bought on a whim from a used outboard shop. It was a 1953 5HP Scott Atwater “Bail-O-Matic” (see above photo) and it was a noisy bucket of bolts that spit oil, took about fifty pulls to start, if it started at all, and was loud enough to wake the dead. My friends all made fun of me, but I suppose that motor paid for itself in the amusing stories it generated. We nicknamed it “Bobo” which was an allusion to a joke about sodomy. My antique outboard phase was short-lived. The next outboard was a 1980s Evinrude 4HP which was an awful motor, had a poorly designed throttle lever, and a pull cord that periodically broke. I beat the crap out of that motor, sold it, then bought the motor I’ve had for the past fifteen years, a very reliable Yamaha 3hp.
Finally, the story of how the “Raging African Queen” came to be named. Over the years, the Feathercraft went by several names. When I was a boy, I named it “Wasp” after the aircraft carrier. It then became the “Asp”. Years later, and shortly before Bobo met its untimely demise (I did keep the engine cover which I now use for a unique lampshade), one of my artist friends, who happens to be gay, decided that he would paint a new name on the transom, in yellow Rust-o-leum. We’d been joking about renaming it “The African Queen”, and someone (not me) decided that “The Raging African Queen” was an even better name. Before I knew it, there was my artist friend Peter, painting that name on the back of the boat. Rust-o-leum is forever. The name, like the paint, stuck, and from then on, this legendary aluminium boat, which I’d now owned for over thirty years, and which was still providing us with hours of boating fun, became affectionately referred to as “the Queen”. A while ago, it too was stolen off our beach, and I was crestfallen. The idea that someone would steal a boat with that name painted on the transom is unbelievable to me, but someone did. We did some pretty silly things with and in that boat. I distinctly remember one night, with several other passengers aboard, probably somewhat intoxicated, driving that boat around half full of water. At one point, I had to jump out of the boat in waist deep water and rescue the motor before the ship went down. One of my favorite boat photos is a rear shot of the Queen, pulled up on shore, Bobo mounted on the transom, covered in seaweed, tar, and other lake grime. Boating with attitude. I keep hoping that someday the Queen will resurface, but now, these many years later, I think the prospects are slim. Funny, the things we hold dear in life.
Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c2009 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
No comments:
Post a Comment