What Are Fathers For ?

For
teaching us
to row

By Dudley Dawson

I have happily spent my entire life in and around boats of every description, from the wooden rowboat that provided my earliest taste of freedom to the magnificent motoryachts that now dot the landscape of my professional life. When I’m not writing about boats or working on boat designs for a living, my spare time is filled with boating with my family and friends, usually here in the waters of the southeastern United States.
Whom do I have to thank for my own personal version of “It’s a Wonderful Life?” In a word, “Dad.” He’s the one who taught me to row even before I entered kindergarten, and bought me my first outboard, a three-horsepower Johnson, when I was a third-grader. A couple years later, I was handing him tools as he put the new engine, a four-cylinder, 60-horsepower Graymarine, in the family’s boat, a Chesapeake deadrise affectionately known as Old Faithful.
The deadrise was great for fishing and cruising, but not so good for waterskiing, an early passion of my brothers and mine. Thus it was Dad who, after much whining and pleading on our part, footed the bill for that first Crestliner runabout. It was a little aluminum number that always floated stern-down due to an oversized Evinrude that, in spite of its weight, developed barely enough horsepower to pull us out of the water.
It was also Dad who protected us from Mom when she discovered we’d swiped her broom and cut off the handle to use with our ski towline, which was her clothesline until we swiped that, too. Mom soon became the least of our worries. The pilfered line was nylon and when the skier fell, the stretch would come out of the line, whistling the broomstick over the Crestliner.
Why was my dad so supportive of boating? I’d guess it was due to his dad. He grew up on the family farm, a 1000-acre Virginia tract surrounded by water on three sides—the Occoquan River to the north, Belmont Bay and the Potomac River to the east, and Occoquan Bay and Marumsco Creek to the south. The lower portion of the farm, then known as Deephole Point, is now the Occoquan Bay National Wildlife Refuge.
In addition to farming, the family had a fishery that operated from the same site in the early 1900s, and Dad managed a duck hunting club and public bathing beach on the sandy southern shore of the farm. The club, which catered to the northern carriage trade with its own rail spur for their private railcars, went under during the Great Depression and the farm was eventually acquired by the U.S. Army for use as a long-range radio transmitting station. The farm buildings and the Army’s massive antennae are gone now, and the only indication that family was ever there is the name on the sign at the refuge’s entrance, Dawson Beach Road.
My dad and granddad both lived well into their 80s, and both continued to boat and fish Marumsco Creek until the end. I was able to enjoy many years on the water with them. In the spring, we set nets to catch the shad run. In the summer, we fished and played. In the fall, we got the waterfront ready to withstand the winter’s ice, and in the winter, we scraped, painted and repaired the fleet to begin the cycle again in the spring.
From an early age, I often piloted Old Faithful under Dad’s tutelage as we journeyed upriver past Mount Vernon to Washington, D.C., or downriver to the Chesapeake Bay. I learned the practical applications of geometry as he taught me, in those pre-depthfinder, pre-GPS days, to triangulate from shoreside landmarks so we could anchor on a submerged rockpile, greatly enhancing our chances of taking a load of striped bass, known locally as rockfish. To this day, 50 years later, I still treasure the day Dad and I hit the mother lode, hooking over 200 stripers. I also remember, with less joy, working into the wee hours gutting, cleaning and consigning the huge pile of fillets to our freezer.
My grandfather didn’t live to see my children, and my dad didn’t live to see my grandchildren, but their love of boats and the water lives in the new generations. My three kids grew up on the waterfront in Florida, where a battered 15-foot skiff was restored to Bristol condition as a family project under the watchful eye of their grandfather and repowered courtesy of their dad. That little boat filled them with pride and provided endless hours of fun, exploring all the islands of the Loxahatchee River and the waterways north and south of Jupiter Inlet. Those Tom Sawyer adventures still fill their memories. It also helped foster a sense of responsibility, independence and self-reliance that serves them well as adults.
My nine grandkids enjoy boating and fishing in the Carolinas, where we currently have seven boats of various sizes and descriptions behind our house. This old man can’t help but smile as he sees his two sons – and daughter – passing along lessons in boating and life that they themselves learned on the water.

About the author:

For
Fixing Our Boats

By Roger Marshall

When my sons were growing up, they played soccer during spring and fall and baseball in summer until they were about seven years old. As a typical dad I coached them for soccer and watched their baseball practice, but life changed when they enrolled in the local yacht club sailing program. Sailing hit all the right buttons for both boys. After just one year we bought a pair of Optimists, which they sailed at regattas all over the northeast. While in high school, they raced 420s during the week, and sailed on OPBs (other people’s boats) whenever they didn’t have a 420 regatta.
By the time my sons went to college, they had become boat owners in a big way. First, the Optimists got traded in for a Laser. When he was 11, my eldest found a beat-up skiff at the local yacht club. When he asked if he could buy it, he was told it was going to be put up for auction to benefit junior sailing. His was the first bid–$25. However, well- meaning members who wanted to help junior sailing upped the ante to more than $300.
My guy waited until five minutes before the auction closed to make the final bid. Ten minutes after he took possession, we dragged it home for a complete refit. Sporting a 9.9 hp outboard, it sped around the local yacht club and mooring field most of the summer.
Then came an opportunity too good to pass up. Both boys had been sailing with a yacht club member on his J/22 for Sunday afternoon racing series. When he sailed for Europe aboard a much larger boat, he offered the J/22 to the boys to race for the summer. They won the series championship.
After sailing back from Europe the following summer, the member decided to sell the J/22. We bought it– boat number three. As owners, the amount of care lavished on the boat increased exponentially. It became the platform from which they won the local J/22 series four more times and went to the World Championships with their friends. At the worlds, they had fun, met a lot of good sailors and apparently learned a lot. As one of their opponents said after they returned, “since the Worlds, the boys are so much faster than the rest of us, that they’ve raised the game for the entire fleet.”  To cut a long story short, as the boys acquired boats, I acquired projects. I don’t quite know how they did it, but we ended up with a dozen or so boats in the garage–  spilling onto the driveway and deck–ranging from lasers to inflatables to the J/22 and, oh, my Seacraft 18.
Then, one day in September some cushions appeared. “Storage for a friend,” I was told. A few days later more boat parts arrived, then more. Finally, around Christmas time, when the boys were home from college, I made inquiry.
“I bought a J/24 that needs a little work, but I didn’t want to tell you because you said we can’t get the cars in the garage [because there are too many boats in there already] and there are too many boats in the driveway,” my eldest son told me.
Sensing a fate accompli, I went to look at the boat. It needed more than a little TLC, more like oxygen, an IV, and intensive care. I dragged it home, moved cars aside and left it in the driveway, thinking that “we’d” work on it during the winter and sail it the following spring. In January, the boys went back to college; (“Dad, we’re on the sailing team and have a regatta this weekend, can you. . .”) became the mantra that winter. With that methodology, it was 18 months before it was launched again. With their “fix up” in my hands, I’ll admit it became an epic, and “we” did a ton of work; new floors, new cabin sole, new fore and main hatches, repaint inside and out, new bottom job and keel fairing, new sails, and a new sound system (most important!).
It can be fun working with your sons on boats, but it was hard work and a lot of effort. The final boat is now my eldest son’s pride and joy, as well as the subject of my latest book. By the time you read this, the J/24 will be measured and entered in the local racing series and there will be a bit more room in my driveway.  But what is more important is that both boys sail together and sailboat racing is something they can do for the rest of their lives. Hopefully, they continue to sail together for many years, but if they don’t, they can go their own ways secure in knowing that they rebuilt one boat and can do it to others.
Hopefully, when they have sons who become interested in sailing, they will work with them to rebuild whatever clunkers get brought home. It will bring the family together and increase both the boat’s and the family’s values. Their cars, however, will never see the inside of a garage  again.

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