Tidelines Winter 2018

By Mark Sampson

BOAT LESSONS IN LIFE T his past August a somewhat uncommon (for that time of the year) nor’easter pushed through Delmarva which gave me a couple days off from my busy summer fishing schedule and a little time to finish a project I had been trying to get done for over a month.

Our little 15-foot rowboat is almost 50-years old, but with just a little routine TLC she continues to provide us with fun times on the water.

The little plywood boat was built in 1968 and started its life as part of a fleet of rental boats at “Captain Joe’s Marina,” which sat just north of the Rt. 50 Bridge where the Lazy Lizard Restaurant is now. We bought the boat about 20-years ago from the Captain Joe’s widow after the marina was long gone. It’s my understanding that the owner and his help made all of their own rental boats and this one he kept for himself after selling the marina. When we acquired the boat it had been sitting in an old chicken house off of Sunset Blvd for I don’t know how long. Suffice to say that it’s an “old” wooden boat, and to keep her “right” over the years I’ve had the pleasure of replacing the transom, the seats, a couple of the bottom runners, as well as sanded off and re-applied more gallons of paint than I want to think about. Yea, compared to shiny waxed fiberglass boats she’s “different” but still “pleasing to look at” and my wife and I have had her so long she’s certainly both a labor of love and a joy that has allowed us countless good times on the water. Whether it’s made of wood, fiberglass, or metal, maintaining any boat is a constant learning experience

Late last January when I hauled her out of the water I realized that the little 15-foot wooden boat that my wife and I use for clamming, exploring, trips to Assateague, and just playing around in the bay needed some serious TLC, as the stem (bow) had some serious rot going on and needed to be replaced. Even for a little boat like that, such a project is not something you do in a couple days, so I had to table the task until after I got back from Florida in early May. Of course by then I was knee deep in our fishing season up here and could only pick at the little boat whenever I had a spark of free time. Finally, with a brand new stem, fresh paint, couple handfuls of fasteners, some globs of 5200 adhesive and a dab of West-System epoxy the little boat slid down the ramp and back into the water where it belongs and will hopefully stay until the end of January.

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