We went for a boat ride Friday just before a cold front arrived:
We hadn’t taken the jon boat out for a while because the water level in the river has been uncommonly low, about as low as I can remember. Old timers have seen worse; they recall a drought so severe that cattle from ranches on one side of the river crossed the muck to forage in the woods on the opposite shore.
There’s a dam upriver that’s visible at a distance in the video, and the water level difference is a couple of feet. Sometimes after the rainy season, you can run an outboard right over that dam. But this summer, the regular afternoon thunderstorms didn’t materialize on this side of Florida.
Thanks to a dreary, wet winter, there’s finally enough water to comfortably run the outboard. Canoes are better for us and the planet, but in my opinion, nothing compares to puttering around in a small boat, looking at birds and appreciating the wild scenery, cocktail shaker in hand. Pure bliss.
We acquired the boat from my dad when he sold off his dive shop/marina rental stock and retired. It’s a 1980s-era boat that had an outboard engine of the same vintage which we used to call the “Ancient Mariner.” But it threw a rod, and we replaced it with a virtuously quiet Yamaha 15 HP 4-stroke.
The engine is the only clean, modern item associated with our boat. During yesterday’s excursion, I noticed how filthy the boat is, how stuffed with cypress leaves and sweet gum doodads every crevice is, how covered with lichen all vertical surfaces are. I was thinking we should probably haul her out for a deep cleaning, but possibly the lichen is the only thing holding her together!
There’s a cheap doormat on the bow which can be seen briefly in the video. That’s for the dogs to stand on during the rare occasions they come along for a boat ride — it provides purchase for their claws so they don’t skid across the metal when there’s a sudden change in speed.
When a boat is underway, any dogs present immediately turn into Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic — king of the worrrrrrrrld. But our two are too excitable to bring aboard often. They bark and raise hell and leap over the benches, generally harshing our mellow. So mostly they get left behind.
Thanks to the cold front, today is too chilly for boating, so we’ll probably loll around watching playoff football. But it will warm up during the week, so we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled waterborne birdwatching and cocktails ritual. I think we’re gonna need that this year more than ever.
Open thread.