Joel’s water taxi

I’m so embarrassed.

I can’t believe I did this.

I should go hide somewhere.

But instead, blogger that I am, I feel compelled to confess.

Publicly, digitally, electronically.

The deed I perpetrated cannot be undone.

Here it is in a nutshell.

Well, a really BIG nutshell.

A coconut shell.

Am I not the guy who wrote nearly 60 columns about wooden boats, wooden SAILboats, for a sailing publication?

Am I not the guy who spent seven years fantasizing and some of the time working on restoring a 1965 wooden Lightning sailboat?

Member for many year of Pontiac Yacht Club, the “yacht” referring to boats propelled exclusively by wind? A club with a rule that members may only launch non-motorized boats at its ramp?

Then what in the world was I thinking of last week when I bought, gasp, choke, purchased a STINKBOAT!

It’s a 1996 Crestliner 1650 SC, which decoded means it’s 16.5 feet long, hull made of welded aluminum, has a 60-hosepower Johnson outboard engine and a side-steering console. And that’s just for starters.

Why, this boat has GPS. It has a fish-finder. Ship-to-shore radio. A bow-mounted 35-pound thrust electric trolling motor with its own 12-volt battery and wireless remote control.

Did I mention the 18-gallon built-in fuel tank? The bait well and the live fish well, both with filled with fresh water circulated by a pump separate from the bilge pump? This boat will troll for pike at 2 mph or plane at 40 mph. It will pull a water skier.

Originally, I was searching for a fishing boat we could use on vacations in Georgian bay in Canada. I was going to leave the boat in Canada. Now, I’m planning on keeping this boat around home.

My first book, UP THE ROUGE! PADDLING DETROIT’S HIDDEN RIVER, written with Detroit Free press photographer Patricia Beck as co-author, is to be published in early 2009 by Wayne State University Press. It’s about the canoe trip Pat Beck, and I took up the Rouge by canoe in June 2005. Well, now if we want to go back and check out scenes, or collect new data and make new observations for my next book about the Rouge, we have the means.Thirty mph headwinds? No problem for the Crestliner.

I can use this boat to show others some of the amazing things to be seen on the nine miles of the Lower Rouge stretching from Zug Island at the Rouge’s mouth on the Detroit River all the way up past Michigan Avenue to Henry Ford’s mansion at Fair Lane in Dearborn.

Why, this is more than a boat: It’s a RESEARCH tool.

Contact me at joelthurtell(a)gmail.com