My father was lucky enough to retire early, at the age of 62. He decided to buy a fishing boat capable of braving Lake Erie in almost any weather. If you’ve never heard, Lake Erie is really shallow (210 feet maximum depth) and is therefore particularly vulnerable to the wind, and churns up into white … Read more

In the late seventies, my father made his next move in boat ownership and bought a used, aluminum Duo with an outboard motor and a trailer. I was there when the purchase was made, and to my immature mind, it had all the trappings of a clandestine and somewhat illegal purchase: we met a gentleman … Read more

I checked with family, and learned that the first trailer my father bought for that first boat was a kit purchased from Sears. This is a throw-back to the day when almost anything could be purchased from Sears, and harkens back to the days of America’s rural, innocent past, when, once the natives were cleared … Read more

Maritime disasters all seem to be unique, and each has their own, bizarre sequence of events that led to their untimely demise. The Edmund Fitzgerald was loaded with oar, caught by a storm, and took on too much water; the Titanic sped with over-confidence into the iceberg laden waters of the the North Atlantic, and … Read more