The little Boston Whaler tugged at its anchor line as it rose and fell with the afternoon swells of Long Island Sound. The sun was directly overhead, dividing a clear blue sky punctuated by cottony cumulus picture clouds that moved unhurriedly across the sky. A few seagulls glided and hovered over the boat in hopes of scoring a free meal. I lay on my back on the floor of the boat and watched the clouds, thinking that one of them looked a lot like my mom. I immediately felt bad about comparing my mom’s lovely face to a cloud, but jeez, it really did look like her. I checked the other clouds to see if I could find one that looked like my father, but not a one looked anything like the butt end of a horse.

Yeah, I was annoyed at my father, but then that wasn’t a new thing. Neither of us had much use for the other. Adopting me was my mother’s idea, and according to my dad, she guilt tripped him into agreement after she had an ectopic pregnancy and ended up unable to make any more children. I wasn’t true family blood, and while I enjoyed the status my mother’s money had achieved for the family in society, internally, at home, my status was something less. I was currently angry because he refused to go to my school’s father-son picnic and barbecue. It was held at the end of the school year and was when different awards from the school year were presented to their winners. I was due to get an award for an essay I wrote about air travel and wanted my father to see me recognized as good at something. When I asked him to go to the picnic he replied with a succinct ‘no.’ He didn’t say that he had a previous engagement or would be traveling for the company where he worked. He just said no. I could have gone on my own, or suffered the indignity of showing up with my mother, a situation that would bring no end of hazing from other kids. My mom would go; my mom would hitch hike to hell in bare feet if I asked her to go with me. My mother was a wonderful woman.

I didn’t collect my award because not only did I not go to the picnic, I played hookey and took my boat out rather than go to school. Laying on the hard floor was getting to me, especially where my shoulder blades contacted the stiff fiberglass flooring. I climbed up behind the steering wheel console and cranked up the outboard.  Turning into the wind I rammed the throttle to max and the Whaler immediately came up on lane and started jumping from the tops of the swells. The boat made yeee-umpf, yee-umpf noises as I skipped like a rock over the sound. I loved that boat.

Off to port, which is left for those who don’t use nautical terms, I saw one of the Power Squadron boats making its way towards me. The Power Squadron were like water cops. They didn’t carry guns or anything, but they kept order by issuing tickets to people who made waves in no wake zones, failed to obey the channel markers, or pulled a water skier without a lookout in the boat in addition to the driver. They could detain people who chose to be uncooperative and the town cops and the Coast Guard were both just a radio call away.  The guy was alone in the boat and he hooted his air horn at me. The sign he wanted me to heave to for something. I figured he probably wanted to do a safety inspection, making sure I had a fire extinguisher, a life jacket, at least one oar and had my fuel tank properly mounted. Sighing, I backed off on the throttle and turned a quick U turn allowing him to sidle up next to me.

“Looks like someone who should be in school isn’t where they’re supposed to be.” he said. Looks like someone doesn’t know how to back away from the table and looks a lot like a whale, I thought to myself. I remained silent. “So, do you have a permission slip to be out here during school hours?” he asked. As if there was such a thing. I told him no, that today was father son picnic day and my dad couldn’t take me so I wasn’t missing school. He got on his radio and spoke to someone, I couldn’t hear either side of the conversation. “The police say this isn’t a day off.”

I was getting annoyed. “The police don’t keep school schedules,” I said, “and besides that, they have no way of knowing about special circumstances.”

“Special circumstances, eh? I think you better tie off and I’ll tow you in so we can get to the bottom of this.” I gave him an ‘are you kidding me?’ look and shoved my throttle to the stop. Before he could move, my little Whaler hopped u on plane and I went skipping off across the waves. Gaining his wits, he throttled up his boat and came after me, honking his stupid paint can air horn. I didn’t even look back. I knew he couldn’t really catch me. My boat could do an easy fifty knots and his couldn’t. But I knew also that he would dog me until I gave him reason to abort. I surmised that I hadn’t done anything the would merit a police response and so I planned to ditch him. I shot off towards the Fish Islands. They’re a few rock piles that manage to be taller than high tide and have a couple of die hard scrub trees popping out of them like candles on a birthday cake. There are two or five islands, depending on it being high or low tide. There are lots of rocks and you have to know exactly where they are to go between the islands, otherwise you’re likely to break a shear pin.

Outboard motors use shear pins. Their propellers slide onto the drive shaft without any keying. But the props have a channel carved into the rear face of the hub and a steel pin sticks through a hole in the drive shaft and nestles into the channel. A washer and nut hold it all in place. Thus if you hit a rock with your propeller, rather than breaking the drive shaft or damaging the gear case, you just shear off the pin. I had spent hours and hours exploring the cost near our home on Butler’s Island, and I had replaced enough shear pins that I knew where every rock was, and which ones I could clear and which ones I couldn’t. I had broken so many of the pins that I bought a bunch of nails and cut them to size with a hacksaw. A Mercury shear pin was $1.50 and my home made ones were like $0.25 for fifty of them. But all of those pins I had sacrificed taught me a lot about where I could safely take my boat and the path I’d need to follow.

Mr. Power Squadron was about 200 feet behind me when I started getting cocky. I mean, I was frustrated and hurt by my dad’s refusal and here this fat guy was just making my day worse. So I backed off the throttle a little to let him gain on me. I was sure he figured I was slowing for the Fish Islands, about a quarter mile ahead. I grabbed the tilt lever. It will tilt the motor forwards and backwards to allow you to get the best angle and bite for your propeller. By tilting the motor forward, it lifted the prop up closer to the surface and caused it to throw the water upward rather than straight back. As he got to within about fifty feet, I gave the tilt level another slight nudge and opened up the throttle. The motor responded by throwing up a beautiful rooster tail that lofted 20 or so feet into the air and came down right into the Power Squadron boat, drenching the guy. I pulled back on the tilt lever and dropped the prop back to its optimal position and shot perfectly between the islands. Mr. Power Squadron, wiping the water out of his eyes realized where he was and yanked his throttles back. He wasn’t foolish enough to try and pass between the islands. I made a good feeling skidding turn eastward and shot across the Sound towards the mouth of Five Mile River and the marinas and moorings that clogged it.

When I entered the river I dropped to five mph, the no-wake speed. I respected that rule because I knew how wakes could chafe boats tied at the piers and floats, damaging them. Besides, Mr. Power Squadron was way, way behind me. I motored into the river and moved up to the fishermen’s pier. I scooted underneath it and hid myself behind the fishing vessels tied off there. A few of the men looked at me briefly, and went back to what they were doing. When the Power Squadron boat came idling past, none of them made the effort to point me out and fatso cruised right on by. I motored out from under the pier and waved to the fishermen. They waved back, smiling. I headed back out towards the sound. Mr. Power Squadron saw me, and realized that I would be long gone by the time he made a three point turn in the clogged waterway and get back into the chase. I knew that he knew who I was, and figured that he’d call the house and complain.

When I got home later and walked into the house, my mother confronted me. “I got a call from the Power Squadron about you. The man said you refused to yield and eluded him as he tried to perform a safety inspection.”  I told my mom what happened. I could always tell my mom anything. She might not like it, but the way she was encouraged me to always fess up. “So, there was no safety inspection? He was just hassling you about school?”

I told her yeah, that was it, and I already felt bad enough about dad blowing me off. Well aware of the relationship between my father and I, she understood. My mom loved dad, but that didn’t mean she approved of everything he did.

The canoe was hardly the proper boat but we didn’t care. Toby, Doug and Bob paddled it out of Five Mile River and into Long Island Sound. It was a beautiful day for the fourteen year old boys, the sky a crystalline blue with puffy bright white cumulus clouds hanging lazily above. It was 85 degrees out and the water was a tepid 72. Summer on the Connecticut shore. Bob had been grounded from his Boston Whaler after taking it up to New Haven and motoring into the restricted area of the submarine works. Naval Shore Patrol had given him a stiff bracing and sent him off; no direct punishment, what they did was worse. The bastards called the house and reported the infraction to his mother. She, in turn, mentioned it to Bob’s father who took the matter up with Bob. The result was losing the keys to the Whaler for two precious weeks.

This left the three musketeers with Toby’s canoe and pseudo-tugboat, the Phoebe B. Bebe, a tipsy double ended dory with a 5 horse Johnson sitting in a center well to drive it. The boat could barely get out of its own way no less pull a skier and so Bob’s father’s punishment took a pound of summer flesh from not just Bob but his two friends as well. They were making the best of it, and thus were paddling a two-man canoe laden with the trio. They rounded the point when some schmuck in a 30 foot inboard skiff ignored the No Wake placards and opened his throttle. The effect on the canoe, with only two inches of freeboard between the water surface and the gunwale was predictable. The boys all watched the two foot wake sweep towards them and tried frantically to turn the bow into the wave. The roller hit them in a quartering angle and water flooded over the gunwale and swamped the canoe instantly. Treading water, they looked angrily at the skiff to see the captain holding up his middle finger up in their direction as he plowed out into the sound.

The boys tried to roll the canoe inverted, lift it and roll it back afloat but didn’t have the strength (or buoyancy) to pull it off. They ended up dragging it over to the rocky shoreline where they managed to empty it out and refloat it. They spent the afternoon paddling it around back and forth between the mouth of the river and the Tokeneke Beach Club, inspecting the bottom in the shallows for different sea life. Not a very productive endeavor, all they found was a horseshoe crab and a few jellyfish. Oh, Toby found an old rubber boot. Pretty much bored and with evening coming, they paddled back to Five Mile River to reach the back side of Butler’s Island and the marshes where Toby’s family had a dock. Five Mile River is a misnomer. It’s neither five miles long nor is it a river. It’s a very skinny inlet with a creek at the inland end feeding into it. The boys were again rounding the point and turning into the river when that same jerk came between the channel buoys on plane. He saw the kids in the canoe and turned toward them, dropping the throttle suddenly as he neared. He sheared off and idled up the river to where he moored his boat, leaving the hapless kids to deal with the huge bow wave his dropping throttle created in addition to his wake. Once again they got swamped only to see him shoot them the bird again.

“What’d we ever do to him?” wailed Doug.

“Beats me,” panted Toby, treading water.

“I never saw him before today.” Bob said. They all shrugged and again pushed the canoe to the shore and repeated the refloating task. By the time they finally paddled their way to Toby’s dock they were pretty tuckered out. The boys pulled the canoe on shore and laid it upside down on the wooden rack Toby’s dad had made. It had a chain and combination lock bolted to it that Toby hitched to the canoe to prevent it from disappearing. They all sat on the little dock, feet hanging in the water and discussed the guy who’d swamped them not once but twice in one day. On purpose.  Thinking caps on, they couldn’t for the life of them figure out why the guy had such contempt for them.

“He certainly doesn’t like us.” said Toby.

The following day they all packed into the Phoebe B. Bebe, the unstable dory, to attempt a trip out to the lighthouse at Greens Ledge. The sound was very calm with only a light breeze, otherwise they’d have never risked it. They motored thyeir way from the tidal basin around the island to the mouth of the river when here comes that sea skiff again. He passed so close they could have spit into the boat with ease –and probably should have. The Phoebe B. Bebe rocked violently, shipping water over the gunwales by the gallon but it stayed afloat. They watched the skiff rise up on plane and move away, committing her name to memory. “Bondsman” was arched in gold leaf on the transom. The boys abandoned their trip to the lighthouse. “That’s it.” snarled Doug, scooping water with a bailer cup. I think we should tell our parents about that guy.”

Toby said it wouldn’t do any good telling his folks, chances were his father played golf with him because his dad played golf with just about everybody and wouldn’t want to get anyone questioning his handicap. Both of the boys looked at Bob who looked at the retreating Bondsman and back to his friends. ” My dad would think it was funny. I think we need to deal with this ourselves.”  he said. The boys finished bailing out the Phoebe B. Bebe and putted their way back to the tidewater marsh. Bob was silent for most of the trip, deep in thought. On the way back they saw old man Porter mooring his lobster boat. They waved and Porter returned the gesture, albeit with a single finger. Toby and Doug grumbled about the acidic old salt but Bob started smiling.

At home, Bob got great news. His parents were going to Chicago for four days. That meant that he and his sister would be holding the fort on our own, with a few of the neighbors calling to check on us from time to time. No sooner than his mother’s Thunderbird disappeared around the corner of Butler’s Island Road he was rooting in his fathers top dresser drawer. He pulled the keys to his Whaler out triumphantly, smiling at the little red and white float they were attached to. Just after dark, Bob, Toby and Doug were in the Whaler and motoring onto the sound.

The next day it was all the news at the marinas up and down the river. Someone had cut the buoys from old man Porters lobster lines causing the cantankerous fisherman to waste the day dragging for his traps. He was fit to be tied and had asked just about everyone he met on the piers if they knew anything about it. Of course, no one did. As night fell, the boys again met at the Whaler and made another trip out and back under the cover of darkness. In the light of the following day, the Power Squadron was talking to people at the marinas because once again someone had cut the buoys from old man Porters lobster traps. The boys happened to be at Jenkin’s Boatyard gassing the Phoebe B. Bebe when an officer of the Power Squadron approached them. The boys stood in a line as the officer asked them questions in reply to which the boys swore their innocence. Bill Jenkins himself heard the query and explained to the officer that the only vessel the boys had that was suitable out on the sound was “in hack”  and hadn’t been going anywhere, and besides that, the youngsters wouldn’t be out on the water at night anyway. They’d be in bed. This seemed to satisfy the Power Squadron officer who moved along to question other denizens of the marinas.

“We need to take tonight off.” said Bob. “I have a feeling that people will be laying for the culprits and we’re likely to get caught.” So the boys each stayed home and watched television. But the next night they were back out on the water in the purloined Whaler. In the morning there was a lot of bustling activity. Once again someone had cut the buoys from old man Porters trap lines, but this time they’d found one of the floats hanging from the back of a sea skiff moored in the river. Not only that, but twelve sea bass were discovered in a cooler tucked into the cabin. Even if the boat owner possessed a fishing license, which he didn’t, there was a limit of six of any licensed species. The owner of the sea skiff, a Chris Craft named Bondsman, had a lot of explaining to do. As he was being ferried to shore in a Power Squadron launch, three young boys in a canoe smiled widely at the man in custody. He glowered at them only to see them all raise their hands in a one-finger salute.

“I don’t see how come we had to spend money at the fish market.” complained Doug. “I was saving up.”

Sandusky Bay Power Squadron and the Sea Scouts winter sailing by Ceder Point