One of my friend's fathers bought a boat back about '6

8 and he took his wife, his son, daughter, son-in-law and I to Provincetown in it. Along the way one of the two engines crapped out and we limped into Provincetown where he hired someone to fix it and we returned home stuffed into a rental car.

 I had just gotten my driver's license and my parents had not yet put the insurance on dad's car yet, but a couple of days after we returned I got a call from my friend's dad asking me if I would return the rental car to Provincetown and the boat to the North River.

I went straight to his house for orders and accepted the job immediately. Much to my surprise he loaded a case of pretty good beer in the car trunk after he stuffed it into a cooler along with some steaks. He explained that he did this to keep us from doing what we most likely would have done which was gotten someone else to buy us beer.

Looking back on it, it made sense in a way as getting a buyer back then meant you could either get ripped off or get into trouble.

He told me to bring the beer straight to the boat and then return the rental car. He also assigned his son to the detail.

He had an older son but most likely decided that he wasn't the man for the job and looking back on it, the decision to send me made sense. He knew I didn't drink too dangerously or do too many stupid things and that his oldest son was likely to get tied up with a bunch of potheads in Provincetown. I believe he was right about his decision regarding his son.

I suppose that Provincetown had a lot of gay activity at the time but it was pretty much under cover back then. It was then known more as a hippie mecca and an art colony of sorts.

The following day I picked up his son and the car and headed down to the Cape and the first thing we did was snag some more ice for the beer and put it back in the trunk. Cooler chests back then were not all that efficient.

We arrived at the marina and hauled the beer and some grub on board, I returned the car and no questions were asked about me being under 25 years old which was likely a pretty big deal back then as the rates for under 25 year old drivers were pretty high. Then we went to the boat and checked things out. It was still well before noon.

I did the necessary administrative chores, plotting our course onthe charts and I checked the weather. It was a bit overcast and the guy in the next boat told me that the following day was predicted to be clear and the seas calm. I called my friend's dad from a pay phone and told him I wanted to wait and he agreed.

That gave us a pretty good night on our own in Provincetown and with a boat like that as a chick magnet, we hit the streets and it wasn't long before the pair of us cheerful idiots ran into a pair of little honeys that came back to the boat with us.

I suppose they were a year or two older than we were but it's a lead pipe cinch that the boat sealed the deal and with steaks and beer nature ran its course that night and when we got up we knew we had responsibilities to attend to and that the fun was over.

The girls went their way and the second they were on the dock I turned to the matter at hand. I was now the captain of a ship and had a destination.

I didn't have to look at the chart because I had done so the previous day and had written down the compass course.

Then I fired up both engines, let them run for several minutes and checked the oil pressures and when the guage lifted off the peg I had my friend throw off the lines, bumped the port engine into gear and we slipped off of the dock and I gently bumped the starboard engine into gear.

We managed to get the big vessel out of the marina all right and we headed out to sea. It was then that I rang the engines up to flank and headed to what was the initial point. It was there I would turn her towards the mouth of the North River and head across Massachusetts Bay.

I had plotted my compass course based on that particular spot.

I actually did a pretty good job of plotting because my dad had taught me navigtion pretty well a couple of years back. I had plotted a straight line, figured the true bearing, and converted the true bearing to a magnetic bearing and then added the compass deviation into things.

I also realized that I had no way to figureout what the currents of Massachusetts Bay were going to do so I figured that when land came back into view I would simply read the chart and figure out how far off I was.

We got to the initial point, just off of Race Point, and then I turned her around and started out at flank speed to test the engines and sure enough, the one that had given us trouble on the way in was starting to heat up again. I throttled both of them back to a cruise and saw that the heat was staying in a managable range at that speed so I decided to go for it.

It was a pretty uneventful crossing and it wasn't long before we were out of sight of land and I felt like Colombus for a bit, but after a while we came back in sight of land.

Of course, we were a little too far out to make out any of the land's features and map-spot ourselves, but after awhile things started to sharpen up.

My friend got on the VHF radio and tried to call the place where we were going, a little marina I worked at sometimes and after a couple of tries got through. A few minutes later they called back and his father was on the other end. He wanted to know where we were and I told him the coast hadn't sharpened up enough for me to tell him with any accuracy.

He sounded worried and I told him to wait a second as I had spotted something.

"I just spotted one of Bob Hale's lobster bouys," I reported. "I know where we are."

He seemed incredulous. "You're basing your position on a lobster bouy?"

"Yeah. I know where Bob fishes and there's another one coming up. We're coming up on between Humarock and Rexhame beach. I'm turning north as we speak."

At this point I judged that even if I did overheat an engine and have to shut her down I could safely limp in on one engine so I hammered both throttles down and rang them up to flank speed.

I noticed that the engine that had caused us trouble before was pretty warm but the gauge wasn't in the red so I figured it was OK.

I went north, and turned her into the mouth of the North River and we sped past the spit and hammered our way past Damon's Point and up toward the Route 3A bridge where I slowed her down and went past the dock.

That's where we put out the fenders as I whipped a 180 degree turn and slowed her down and we nestled against the dock and tied her up like gentlemen, pretty as you please.

My friend's dad was out there in a second and greeted us. He seemed annoyed we had taken so long.

 I gave him a full report, explaining to him that I had assumed I wasn't going to hit the mouth of the river directly dfrom Provincetown as soon as I slowed the engines down when we left Provincetown and because going slower we were more suceptible to cross currents.

When he asked me how I knew we were going tobe pushed so far off course, I replied, "You know that. You flew B-24s and you know about cross winds. The slower you go the more they effect you."

He furrowed his brows a bit and thought back about 20 years and a second later, said "You're right. Good thinking. Now what's with this lobster bouy business?"

I told him that I knew where the bouy's owner fished and as soon as I saw the markings on his bouy I knew they were his and had a pretty good idea where we were. He nodded.

Later that afternoon my friends mother came out and told us her husband was pretty proud of us and then had a quiet word with me on the side thanking me for taking such good care of things.

Later that summer my friend's dad hired me a couple of times to run the boat while he entertained on it, and I got paid pretty well for it and also got to scarf up on any leftovers which kept me in a few steaks, beer and pretty good scotch for the rest of the summer.

One night we got fogged in a bit and while he was steering he called me up and told me to take her up the river, which I did running dead slow. It was a bit scary but I did well and his guests seemed quite impressed with me after they got over watching the owner hand the boat over to a teenager in the middle of a fog.



All in all it was a pretty good deal and I came out of it smelling like a rose. It was a pretty good summer.



my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/