From the desk of Mike Joyce
One of my more embarrassing moments…
There I was, stuck in the fumes of a high performance Cigarette boat, just behind his stern and not only couldn’t I do anything about it; it was my idea… well sort of.
You see I’d fired up our 1964 25-foot wood lap-strake Lyman for a morning spin on the St. Lawrence River and it did its usual thing. It started up just fine but then 10 minutes later after hitting a small wave, the engine sputtered and finally just died, leaving me floating in my Lyman looking for help.
Now, I’ll admit this Lyman is not at the top of the antique boat pedigree list but it’s one of my true loves and just like you I spend money on the things I love. I’ve spent buckets of money on this beauty over the years, restoring it from a pile of parts sitting in a friend’s front yard.
Mike & Jan with their 25′ 1964 Lyman at the Clayton, NY village dock
My nephew Mike DiCondina has often pointed out that I could have had a brand new fully functional replica built for less. His other suggestion, which in hind sight was actually a good one, was to just truck the boat down to Rybovich in Palm Beach and have them restore it.
So there I was adrift when, Frank, a neighbor came by in his less than classy, but fully operational, Cigarette boat, and offered me a tow. And I accepted.
Then, as I was hooking up the tow rope, I had an idea, a way to at least get some benefit from my embarrassment at having to be towed.
I told Frank, to tow us by John’s dock on the face of Round Island, even though it wasn’t the most direct course to my dock. Frank, of course asked why. To which I replied, “That’s the guy who used to own CARPE DIEM and he sold it because it kept breaking down on him and I just want to let him know he did the right thing when he got rid of it.”
Sometimes when you own a boat you need a sense of humor, and most of the time I manage to keep mine.
The truth is, whether you’re out in your Hargrave, or running around in an antique Lyman skiff, boats aren’t a necessity for most of us. That is unless you’re talking about your sanity.
And while it’s true my wife and I need a boat to get back and forth to our island home in the Thousand Islands where I spend my summers, I love it there because it gives me a chance to just mess around in boats and to be on the water every day. I have a small navy: wood, fiberglass, aluminum, inboard, outboard, you name it. And I love every one of them – problems and all!
Which is what boating is all about, having fun on the water.
Want to have more fun this year out on the water?
Let’s talk.
Best,
Michael Joyce / CEO
954-683-9800
mikejoyce@hargrave.org
P.S. It turns out that before I bought the boat a rag had fallen into the fuel tank when all the hardware had been removed so someone could strip, stain, and varnish the decks. Depending on the slosh of the gas in tank, the rag would eventually hit the fuel pickup tube and shut off the gas. Then when the pressure on the fuel line would drop the boat would restart and run until the next event. Once I took out the fuel tank and removed the rag, problem solved. (This summer I flew up Fritz Cramer, the top varnish guru in Fort Lauderdale, and CARPE DIEM is looking like a new boat again!)
