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Between the time we abandoned sailing, and subsequently got back into it, we had a plethora of different boats. At one time I remember counting five boats in our backyard ranging from a 12 foot Aluminum Jon Boat to a Juniper planked Harkers Island fishing boat. I can remember only two of the other three boats. Both, for different reasons, are quite memorable.

One of these was a Crosby Sea Sled, really quite a nice boat. I remember it because both Dawn and Chris insisted that they wanted to water ski, so we equipped the boat for skiing and headed for Lake Gaston about 100 miles North of us on the Virginia border. After camping for the night, we loaded the boat, launched it and took them water skiing. Well not really, both kids refused to even try! (Remember what I said earlier about listening to your children.)

The only other noteworthy event occurring while using the Crosby was the capture of Sylvester. Jim Wirth (with whom, and Joe Belinna, I took the Darien "trip" years ago), and I were fishing from it near Indian Island on the Pamlico River, when I saw a large snake swimming in the water and looking tired. I caught it, a 5 - foot Chain King Snake, named it "Sly", for short, and took it home to join several others we kept. Kay was not thrilled, but since they were not rattlesnakes and her son wanted them, she tolerated them. Regrettably, despite our best efforts, they frequently escaped their cages. Some we found, like when getting into bed, and some found us, like when a South going snake and a North going Kay found each other in the hallway to the bedrooms. Standoff!

Chris and I were in the Family Room at the time when we heard Kay say, in sepulcherian tones, "Chris, Carl." Chris lookes at me and said "Mom has found the snake." I nodded. Chris went and rescuded both the snake and his ever patient mother.
Of course, we warned the kids not to tell any of the "babysitters" that a snake was loose when such occurred, and, of course, they told everyone. No more Babysitters.


The other boat I remember from that time was the "Pig Cooker." Why the strange name? After World War II, companies making aircraft turned their unused Aluminum into boats of various sorts. Grumman apparently sought to imitate the popular wooden Chris Craft Runabouts of the time. All this I am told but do not know for a fact.
On one of our summer visits to Kay's parents in Northern Minnesota, Kay's father, Fran, an aficionado of auctions, bid on and bought the one shown at the left (after it was reconditioned). He had no use for it so we bought it from him and Carl, Kay, and Crew towed it all the way back to North Carolina. That became an interesting trip. Every-time we pulled off one of the interstates at a rest stop a line of cars would pull off after us, to look at the peculiar object we were towing. Once, one of the parade of cars following us said
"I see that you are from North Carolina, is that one of the pig cookers we have heard about?"
Hence the name!

We used the "pig cooker" for many years, but it was too strange looking for its, and ours, own good. Everybody:


who could, did, stop us, allegedly, for one reason or another, but really to look at the boat*1. I grew allergic to flashing lights behind us,and that, along with our children having matriculated to High School and thus, as we so assumed, safe to leave alone, convinced us that it was time to move on

Back into Sailing

  1. Recently (~2004), we were in Beaufort and were lucky enough that friends of ours, Tom and Sandra Harper, who have a summer home there, were in residence and took us sailing on their 1920s Cat Boat. As it turned out it was July, 4 and the Harbor was almost shore to shore boats. Amongst them were many marine enforcement boats of every star, stripe, or bar imaginable. I soon noticed that they were only stopping to inspect those boats with Bikini clad girls aboard. The morale, I guess, is:
    To avoid inspections, avoid exotica, of any type, whether innanimate or animate.
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