How To Tie A Bowline

Jeeeeeeezzzzzeeeeee!!!!!!!! I sound so darn mean in this little video my wife BJ recorded of me. I act a little mean, too. Don't know what to tell you about this. It was a GORGEOUS day. We'd just come back from a nice cruise on the Betty Jane. I'd slurped plenty of water so I was nicely hydrated. And there was a slight breeze blowing across Betty's flying bridge.

Could it be that I'm just turning into a grumpy old guy? Hmmmm, maybe. But I'm pretty passionate about my knots, if you want to know the truth. And I tend to be a tad impatient with boat-prone folks who can't deal with the basics in fairly efficient ways, although I've been told that, from a student's point of view, I'm a fairly patient teacher if the student has plenty of patience as well.

Be that as it may. Mean soundin' and actin' or not, I'm pretty easy to understand on the video I think and if you watch the dang thing a bunch of times while trying to replicate what I'm doing with a piece of your own line, you'll get the hang of it right quick, as we say in the Sunny South.



I learned to tie a bowline this way so many years ago I can't remember who my teacher was. Guess it was either some bosun on a Great Lakes ore carrier or the skipper of a Mississippi River pushboat. In either case, I'm betting the guy was a little rough-and-tumble himself.

Good Luck!

Cast Of Thousands...Literally

The marina the Betty Jane calls home hosts a big fishing tournament every July and BIG ain't the half of it. This year there was concern about whether America's faltering economy would cut the number of entries, whether going to a catch-and-release format would diminish the enthusiasm of local anglers, and whether folks from far away would spend the gas money to turn out in droves, droves, and more droves as of yore.

So much for all the concern. This year's four-day 25th Annual Bay Point Invitational Billfish Tournament seemed to cruise along just about as lavishly as any of the others my wife and I've attended in recent memory. Saturday night's when the big weigh-in takes place (complete with giant TV screen and a couple of rock bands) and my wife and I typically hang in there until 11 o'clock or thereabouts, sampling the food, T-shirt, marine art, and other concession stands, talking with friends, and just generally blending into the event. Then we head for Betty, draw the curtains, crank up the two air-conditioning units onboard, and settle in for a serious snooze after checking in on the final results of the tournament via our TV.

This year's festivities were as long-lasting as ever, I'm happy to report. In fact, upon arising from the berth in Betty's forward cabin to hit the facilities a few hours after retiring, I noticed that the dock immediately behind the transom was still groaning under hordes of strolling, dock-lit ladies dressed to the nines, gents dressed to the nines, and casually-attired children staying up way past when they would normally have been tucked into their berths. "Wow," I marvelled to my semi-sleeping wife, "It's two o'clock in the morning and I just saw a woman in a designer dress go by pushing a baby carriage. I think the kid was trollin' for grouper with an Ugly Stick and a Penn Senator!"

Sunday was a quiet day, comparatively. So off we went for a little spin in the Betty Jane. The weather was spectacular. And the water in the shallows was some aquamarine, some yellow, some blue. I let the autopilot drive for the most part. On the way back we eased on past a 110-foot Broward dallying in Grand Lagoon, not far from Bay Point. When I called the skipper on my trusty VHF, he said he was waiting to pick somebody up from our marina. The channel into the docks was just a tad too shallow for the big Broward to get into the transient dock.

As we continued on our merry way, my wife and I began speculating on who the somebody might be. Hmmmmm. The owner of one of the big battlewagons that had participated in the tournament, perhaps? A guy with a tower-accoutered 70-some-footer? Or a tower-accoutered 80-some-footer? Whose other boat is a 110-foot Broward?

As we toodled past the fuel dock, a big ol' Jupiter center-console sped by with 350 Yamahas screamin'. Two guys were onboard, a youngster drivin', an olderster not. The Jupe was headed for the Broward, it looked like.

Sheeeeeeeesh!

Heavens To Betty...The Fuel Thing

A weekend or so ago, I fell to talkin' with a couple of our neighbors at the marina, Russell and Lee, in the way that boaters do, and have been doing for hundreds of years perhaps...cockpit to cockpit. Russell and Lee own a Nordic Tug (as you can see here) with a cool, rather tug-like name: Alice Lee. She's a beaut, and comparatively new although she's got a whole pile of lovely miles on her.

Anyway, Russell says, "Yeah, it looks to me like there aren't that many people going out these days, I guess because of the fuel situation. People are just stayin' on their boats in the marina on the weekends."

Now what Russell was referring to here is the skyrocketing cost of diesel fuel and the plummeting level of actual boat usage that seems to result from it in our marina as well as other marinas across the land. I agreed with him, of course.

"Yeah," Russell continued (that's him waving from his darkened wheelhouse while pulling out of his slip to go off on a moderst little afternoon jaunt), "It's not slowin' Lee and I down that much, though. We're burnin' about three gallons an hour, or thereabouts I think. Not too bad. Not too bad at all."

"Yup," added Lee (that's her waving from the cockpit...with the stylish straw hat and the happy-to-be-going-boating smile on her face), "We've decided to use our boat as much as possible this summer. Life's too short not to. That's how we see it. We're off to Shell Island as a matter of fact."

Certainly, the conversation with Russell and Lee warmed the cockles of my little ol' heart. After all, one of the reasons I purchased my very own turtle-slow but wonderfully economical Grand Banks 32 was the whole issue of fuel. Even four years ago, it seemed to me that some hard times were a'comin', as they say. And it also seemed that a sightseeing-type fuel burn of 1.5 gph (that's Betty's consumption at 1,750 rpm, a rate that produces a cruise speed of approximately 8 knots) might eventually come in real handy.

Now, I know. Nobody in his right mind today wants to hear from some super-fortunate son-of-a-gun (feel free to substitute other, more satisfying words for this last one if you're so inclined) who for one reason or another happens to currently own a comparatively cheap-to-operate motorboat, especially when the tab for go-go juice is blasting bullet holes through the roof of the wheelhouse.

"So that's just wonderful, Billy Boy," I can hear somebody say, "So you got an economical little trawler, eh? Well, whooooop-tee-dooooooo for you. I'm just tickled pink about how lucky you are. Say...why don't you take a long walk off the nearest short pier!"

But listen. Could it be that economical, single-engine vessels like the Alice Lee and the Betty Jane are the next new thing? Could it be that the need for speed's fading from the scene, at least until some whopping mechano-electro-nano-geekster genius comes up with a propulsion system that transcends the pricey drawbacks of internal combustion?

As for me and Betty? Believe it or not, I am starting (and I mean: starting) to think along the lines of retrofitting my old-fashioned trawler with a heavenly new-fashioned powerplant of some sort (You can read about this extravaganza in one of my upcoming At Sea columns in Power & Motoryacht). Maybe a hydrogen fuel cell. Maybe a Starship Enterprise warp drive.

Who knows! I just hope my ol' dead-simple, low-tech Super Lehman doesn't find out what I'm up to!