The Boat Is Out
Last night we finally pulled the boat out of her winter storage spot in the driveshed. Darrell gave her a quick wash and we tested the motor and gave everything the once over. She’s good to go!
Normally this event wouldn’t be something worth blogging about. In a regular year, our boat doesn’t see a whole lot of downtime. The most she goes without use is usually a couple months in the winter. In light ice years we’ve had her out in January. By March or April she’s seeing regular time in the water.
Lately though, we’ve been busy with so many other projects. We also started crown land camping more, which involves scouting trips and often takes us down rough logging trails. Our 12-foot tinny (Luma) will eventually be dragged down a lot of those trails into some hidden gems we’ve found, but we’re just not ready to do that to the Lund.
Darrell has been busy getting mods done to the truck to make sure we’re well-equipped for our adventures, and I’ve been busy starting a new business. Every weekend we would look at the boat and talk about getting her out, but it just didn’t happen until yesterday.
I was so happy to see her out and hear her motor run that my eyes welled up with tears.
Both of us have been running on empty lately. There are so many things on the To Do list and we just don’t seem to have the motivation we used to. I can guarantee that part of that is because we haven’t been getting out in the boat. That Lund Rebel is our happy place. I used to think that the lakes were my happy place, but I’ve realized that being in the boat is my true happy place. It’s so much a part of us.
Life with the Lund hasn’t always been easy. We got off to a rocky start. It took forever to get a pick-up date arranged for her and we couldn’t even get our calls returned by the dealership. When we finally did the 3-hour drive to pick her up, we found that they had installed the wrong motor. It was an ominous start to life with our new boat.
The first couple of outings didn’t go a whole lot better. We had motor issues on the first outing. On the second outing we broke the electric trolling motor. The boat seemed cursed and I started asking Darrell if we could take Luma out instead.
Eventually we managed to sort things out and I started having a lot of fun on our trips. One of the best things was that we could take our old dog Jack with us on trips now. Luma wasn’t very comfortable for him as he got older, but the Lund made things easy. He’d stand in the bow with his nose up in the air, catching every scent. When we were running to the next fishing spot he’d sleep under the console at Darrell’s feet. When we were fishing he’d check out the first few fish we caught, giving them a good sniff. Then he’d sleep under Darrell’s chair for the rest of the afternoon.
Jack’s last camping trip was a fall visit to The Massasauga Provincial Park. We spent every day in the boat, fishing for hours upon hours. He snored, cuddled up in his blanket, ate a pile of treats, got excited for fish, and just had an awesome time. This boat made that trip possible, as well as the many single day fishing trips he went on in the last two years of his life. I’ll forever be grateful for that.
Going from a 12-foot tinny to a 16-foot boat allowed us to fish bigger water, get further out, and not have to head back in with the slightest breeze. That was pretty great for two people who love fishing big water. There is nothing I enjoy more than launching in Meaford and running out to the tank range, or heading over towards Thornbury and Collingwood, or getting so far away from land that you can barely see anything. I’m getting excited just typing about it.
We’ve had some amazing days on the water in this boat. Like one day during the Owen Sound Salmon Spectacular when I initially took a look at the water and said nope. Almost every other boat had come back in when we decided to head out. Our plan was to fish in close to shore where a couple other boats were. Darrell had checked the marine forecast and it called for the wind to die down, so we bided our time. Several hours later we had trolled out to our favourite spot. The monarch butterfly migration was happening and we were treated to a show of them the entire day. The wind had died down and the waves had turned into rollers. Then the rods started firing. I think we had 10 fish that day and lost even more. Mainly lakers with a few salmon. We had to kneel in the boat for pictures and to release fish. It’s one of my all-time favourite days on the water.
In this boat we have broken a prop, broken a skeg, set off the motor temperature alarm when we were fishing in extremely cold weather, and scraped more than a few rocks. We’ve also had amazing adventures, been able to take the dogs with us, and seen amazing sights.
There’s a lot on our project list that doesn’t involve the boat this year, so she won’t get out as much as usual, but that’s okay. We’ll make the most of the times we can get out in her. Last night we talked about the different places to head for our first outing of the year. There are so many options! At the end of the day, it will be fun no matter what, because we’ll be in our happy place.
argosgirl
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