Boot Key Harbor
"Marathon- the Heart of the Florida Keys"

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MOUNTAINTOP REVELATION

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You know -- sometimes people say they have to journey up the side of the mountain to get their heads straight, and put perspective on life. That's how mine occurred about boating. About the 9,500 foot level part way down the side of Steamboat mountain this winter.

I like boating. In fact some people might say that I'm fanatical about it. We're cruisers. But sometimes I feel like a Judas when I betray it with second thoughts and doubts about being out there. You know them -- everyone's had them. Like when the boatyard gives you that estimate for the transmission repair. My Judas thoughts usually occur when we've been cruising for a while, the generator breaks down every day for three days in a row at anchor, the dog's going nuts 'cause he's not been off the boat for 2 weeks (giving new meaning to the term "poop deck"), and I haven't had much sleep the last couple nights because of storms and having to stay up to make sure we don't drag anchor. Then, when we do make port somewhere to get the replacement part for our jury-rigged but working generator, I find out they want $280 for the part. I thought it looked more like a $25 car part to me.

These are the times when I wonder if the all the landlocked world isn't right: "You're nuts to want to spend so much time on the water -- it's boring -- what'll you do?" or -- "Isn't that dangerous? You should be more responsible for your kids sake." -- and "Why don't you spend more time at home like "normal" people do?"

Maybe, I think to myself, I should just be satisfied with some occasional weekend boating and take up some other, more communal and "normal" sport -- like skiing. I am a long time skier after all.

So there I was. A middle-aged man sitting on my butt, in the snow, in the middle of an intermediate run up the side of a 10,000 foot mountain. Sweat was dripping from me everywhere even though it was only about 15 degrees out. It was almost blizzard conditions and I couldn't tell what fogginess was due to steam in my mask and what was just plain invisible from the heavy blowing snow. I was so out of breath from exhaustion that I just had to sit there for a while and recover with my heart racing -- and decide whether the pain in my leg was serious or just uncomfortable. I had just taken another head-over-heels tumble in the "mashed-potatoes" wet and deep snow -- and me, skis and poles went sprawling everywhere. Unfortunately not all in the same directions. I was NOT having a good time at that particular moment.

It was there, sitting quietly on the mountainside, with snow coming down all around me that it came to me like a lighthouse beacon through the foggy night. BOATS! That's a happy thought! It lifts my spirits. I DO like boats -- and I'll take the generator breaking down, and having to dive under to cut the towline loose from the props, and standing anchor watch all night if I have to, and pumping out the dinghy after the rain or the ducks, and beam seas, and all those frustrating things. Maybe I'll even smile when I have to sign the checks to the boatyard from now on!

So with fresh wind under my wings, I struggled to get up and took the next couple of hours to work my way down the side of the mountain -- back to the hotel to give my bruised and aching body a reprieve . . .
. . . and to open my JN books and catch up on my charting -- maybe what I should have just done in the first place.

GREGORY ABSTEN
Columbus Power Squadron, USPS, 1996