Here’s a magazine with real taste. Best cover I ever saw. And a great Grand Daughter also.

Steve Brookman is going to live here in a couple of years when he retires. This place is way up on the northern coast of Maine. His wife, god bless her, said that they could get the old farm house with a giant heated shop for him to play in. When I gave him a bunch of crap about it he reminded me that this beautiful spot is frozen solid and under thirty feet of snow eight months of the year. Why do we all have a cross to bear? Why can't he have this place just like this picture all the time, maybe in the next life.

Here comes a story that you will absolutely, positively not believe. This can not happen in a million years. I was out working on my boat and noticed that the red tractor looked strange; this is what I saw. Some time during the night the Gravely had been started up, driven in a big circle in the yard, run over some saw horses and stuff, hit a shed pole and sat there running digging a hole till it's gas ran out. We all gathered around to figure it out and came to the conclusion that a ghost had to have done it. We never get any vandals out here at the end of the world and this machine isn't the easiest thing in the world to start and make go. We gave up on trying to figure it out till happy hour. We had moved it back out into the drive way and were sitting having a few cold ones when I heard it start up. I figured that one of the guys was doing something with it till Steve yelled, "holy shit, it started itself up again". All we can figure is that water got into the starter switch and shorted things out somehow. Why it would do it after sitting out on a sunny day is beyond me. It wasn't in gear this time so it didn't go anywhere but that did explain things, I guess. We got a new switch.

Howard's Texas Sled got it's motor pulled and is headed to the dump. This is a good example of how you can't let boats just sit unused. This was a beautiful boat, plywood and glassed all over but it sat covered but unused for about five years, you've probably noticed that some of us like to make um but not use um. This one was in the water three times for a total of about two hours. And it had a lot of sealed compartments that accumulated moisture which as you know will find it's way into microscopic openings. The hull is now a giant rotten mess. The motor is getting switched over to a Boston Whaler.

Fland and Brenda took the "Bad Seed" to the Ft DeSoto messabout last week. The weather sucked but cleared up a little in the afternoon. He still maintains that this is the best little boat ever built; it's the foam hull Cortez melon that all of you dumb asses didn't jump all over when I told you that it was for sale cheap. It was another one of those give away priced boats I tell you about once in a while. You should know by now that if I say it's a give away, it's a give away.

Richard Honan and family were out last week for one more summer fling in his boats. Something about racing out and around a light house. Both of us are the same age, the difference is that I have more hair and a lot more fat. I guess there's something to this rowing stuff after all. I doesn't seem to matter, both of us are still falling apart.

Pictures of my two grandsons, Jouji and Charlie; a would apart in distance but together in sleep mode. I would kill to be able to do this.

Scott Hitt wants nothing more that to have a big shallow draft motor boat to go to the Keys and hang out Jimmy Buffett style. He even looks and sounds a little like Jimmy before he got old. Scott has two major problems holding his dreams up; he can't afford to build the boat and live without a job and having a job cuts into his building time. He's at that point in life where he thinks he knows what he wants but the golden ring is just out of reach at the moment. He's one guy who'll get it done in the not too distant future.

Shown here is a guy with a higher calling. Dan Rogers (yes, the real Washington Dan) out boating in Gods country wearing one of my hats. Dam fine hat if I do say so myself thanks to the great Irwin Schuster's logo design. Dan tells me that his boating season will be all frozen over in another three hours or so.

Dogs never get dirty or wet or smelly. Just look at Lucky, Richard's best friend and boat companion. And then there's another Richard's two pristine pure white super soft lovable doggies. I wonder what their mom said when she saw this pair. You know they're showing her how proud they are of the adventure they had in the mud. This one is so precious I doubt if she even got mad at them.

That's it for now, I'll be showing you my fast commuter next time. I'm getting ready to install it's engine and give it a go.