1976 Pontiac Lemans

The first car I bought was from Ed's Used in Willimantic CT.  My boss Lou guaranteed the $1,500 loan from Ed.  I paid $100 per week for my 1976 cherry red Pontiac Lemans.  It had a 350 cc V8 and it was a monster.  You could land a helicopter on the hood.  Everyone who saw it said "Look at that boat!"

Now I know what they mean.

As Alice has told you we took the boat out Friday morning.  I had been crazy nervous about this for days.   It's dangerous and you have the capacity to wreck your neighbor's house, and yours, in under a minute.  The only thing I remember from high school physics really applied here: 

F(orce)=M(ass) x A(cceleration).  A lot can go wrong with 40,000 lbs of boat.

We hired Captain Joe Amore, who taught my safety class, to train us.  His card says he's a "boat coach" and as far as I'm concerned he's the Bill Belicheck of the sea.  Joe is a fantastic teacher.

When he got here it was windy with gusts up to 20 mph, in itself not terrible, but the wind was constantly shifting directions.  Joe spent half an hour looking over the boat, walking around the extremely tight quarters of the marina, and checking the wind.  Joe talks about boating safety with sincerity, statistics, and many detailed anecdotes of disaster for those who don't follow safety protocols.  He says the best trip you take sometimes is the one you cancel on account of shifting weather.  

Joe hinted that it might not be best for us to make the trip, and I started to feel relieved. But he decided after all we were going.  Oh, joy.

He showed us how to start the engines to warm them up, and put the port engine on low idle forward so that it would "suck" the boat into the starboard dock.  Then re-arranged all the dock lines so that we would be able to leave just by Alice flipping one line up, and voila!  No one has to jump back on the boat when its leaving.

He got us out of the marina without hitting anything, which is a damn miracle.  This giant boat has only inches in places to avoid our neighbors.

We have a 42' boat, almost 14' wide in the middle.  It is a "twin screw" boat.  [I'll pause while Jack and Max make their jokes].

After we were in the channel, Joe gave me the controls.  There's a wheel to steer the boat. Plus four levers: a directional (forward/reverse) for each engine (port and starboard), and a throttle for each engine.  It looks like this:

The thing is, the wheel is completely useless to turn the giant boat when you're going slow.  It only works if there is water flowing over the rudder, which needs 4/5 knots.  That is WAY too fast for inside the marina.  So how do you turn the boat?? By running the propellers in different combinations of speed and direction.  

To make the boat go right, you put the port propeller forward, and the starboard propeller in reverse.  Sometimes you give it a burst of gas to turn quickly.

Our entire training session we hardly touched the wheel to turn the boat.  We just used those levers.  Its not hard to learn how to do it in open water.  But when you have to move the boat in a crowd, you have to make lots of fast corrections and changes.

One of my worries was how do you stop a boat?  There are no brakes.  But you can put the engines in reverse in a hurry.

We did lots of turns and stops and changes out in the harbor. It is simply amazing how powerful the transmissions are, and how responsive the boat can be.  We were able turn the boat in a complete circle within its own length.

I had called another nearby marina and asked for a practice slip that would be easy to access and away from other boats. "No problem!" they said.  When we got there, the slip was actually WORSE than my own. Joe decided we would still try it.  He went in and parked first, then I did it.  

Alice was the stern lookout, and she gave me plenty of warning.  But my hands just went backwards of what they were supposed to do and I hit the dock.  I whacked the finger dock twice, but overall it wasn't a complete disaster.  

After the second try, I was DONE.  I was just one big white knuckle.  Every freaking thing around us costs a million bucks.

So we left there and went to the Mystic Fuel depot to take on diesel.  This was an adventure in itself. Docking was ok. Joe showed Alice how to handle the bow and stern lines and hand them to Mike-with-the-kung-fu-grip.  I've never gotten fuel before, so Mike and was a big help.  For one thing, I discovered that I had 4 places to put fuel in, not the two I thought we had.  I ended up calling Sam the previous owner and he told me that yes, I have 4 100-gallon diesel fuel tanks.  Mike had to help us get one of the fills open, it was so locked up.  

And it was expensive!  We bought 261 gallons at $3.15.  I'll let you Mike Rottersman do the math.  The good news is that fuel will probably last a year. And it included a free pump-out.

Then we decided to relax a little, so we took a cruise out into the harbor.  It was beautiful. We got to use the wheel.  What a blast.  Alice drove for awhile and did great.

On the way back I was heading straight on toward a Coast Guard patrol.  Joe said maybe I should rethink my course, unless I liked paperwork and going to court.

One funny thing:  several times over the 4 hours we were out there, I thought damn, I wish I brought my hat, or binoculars, etc.  I kept thinking I left them "back at the house".  But of course, we'd brought our whole house with us.

I got to call the marina on the radio for first time.  It felt very official, but I kept forgetting to say "over". 

When we got back to the marina, I got the boat through the first turn but then panicked and jumped out of the way to let Joe take it the rest of the way in. The constant corrections for wind and drift, etc were way too fast for me.   But Alice and I both think that in few more lessons we'll figure it out.  She's going to be the lead student next time.

When we got back, several of our neighbors came out to take our lines and cheer us on.  One even gave Alice a bouquet of flowers to congratulate her.

Captain Joe and Alice

Mike at the fuel dock