" JimH" jimh_osudad@yahooDOT comREMOVETHIS wrote in
:

Now to the point.........what amazes me is that this 77 year old man
is still into boating and doing so on his own. His wife died many
years ago and he lives by himself. He is a retired aircraft landing
gear design engineer with Parker and served on a PT boat during WWII.
His stories are amazing and still told in vivid detail. He is a
pretty remarkable person and am proud to call him a friend. ;-)

I hope to be able to be boating with my wife, son and daughter when I
am 77. Heck, I hope to be able to pee on my own in a bathroom when I
am that age. ;-)



On our way back from Daytona Beach up the ditch to Mayport where we put
to sea for Charleston, we stopped at the city marina in St Augustine,
about 5PM, in Claire's Navie, an Endeavour 35 belonging to a friend of
mine. He wasn't aboard. One of the other skippers from here had lost
his Yanmar in Daytona Beach and was going to be stranded there for a
while, his wife needed to get back to their business at home, so I drove
her car to Daytona Beach with my sea stuff and she drove home the next
day, leaving Lloyd and I to take Geoffrey's 35 home. It was a great
trip....(c;

We'd been docked about an hour and had cleaned up the boat and showered,
when we struck up a conversation with this white-bearded older gentleman
from the next finger pier over. His name was Jake. His boat was an
older, custom-made, steel motorsailor that must have been some boat when
it was new. Jake was it's only owner and had been to sea in her for
years! It was his second home.

After Lloyd bragged about me being an electronic technician that had
installed all the toys Jake could see at the Endeavour's helm pedestal,
Jake asked us if we could help him program his hand-held GPS, which,
subsequently, turned out to be an old Magellan, one of the first. So,
now with something ELSE to do...(c;...we went over to Jake's boat and he
had his waypoint list all ready to go. We spent the next hour showing
Jake how to use the Magellan, but his hands were too crippled up to
program all those waypoints into it manually. He had pretty advanced
arthritis in his hands...along with some really salty callouses. You
could easily see where the lines were pulling on his skin in his palms.

After the Magellan checkout, I fixed a light over his chart table that
had a bad switch for him. "Come on. Let's get over ashore before the
bars fill up!", he exclaimed.

Now, just like the guy you know, Jake must have been in his late 70's,
even early 80's! JAKE SINGLE HANDED THAT MOTORSAILOR ALONE! He was from
somewhere down near Ft Lauderdale. His wife didn't like boats, but
tolerated him and his for something like 50 years. Jake told us when she
got fed up with him, she'd say, "Don't you want to go sailing
somewhere?", at which point Jake would pack up and move out to the yacht
and just throw off the lines for points unknown. He was in St Augustine
because it was there, not going anyplace special.

Now, dragging us around to the finest bars and eateries in St Augustine,
most of which you WON'T find in any brochure, I met more beautiful women
who knew and loved Jake than you could imagine! We'd set foot in a place
and that old goat attracted the most beautiful women like a magnet!

Waking later than we'd planned, having partied until about 3AM trying to
keep up with Jake, we readied for the final leg in the ditch. I was hung
over....Lloyd was hung over....We were a mess. UP from below on his
boat, here comes Jake all bright eyed and bushy tailed, rarin' ta go.
About 30 seconds later, here comes this little brunette in a T-shirt and
panties hanging on him like she's just slept with Tom Cruise. I don't
even remember coming back to the dock, so I couldn't swear whether she
was with us...or not...or whether ol' Jake had dumped his drunken buddies
and gone back out "lookin'-for-love" after pouring us in our boat!

That white beard and "old salt look" with the rumpled clothes was really
deceiving.....(c;

He helped cast us off in the traffic leaving and our last look at
him...er, ah, them...was them standing in his cockpit, arm-in-arm,
smiling away and waving us goodbye....

Jake was the high point of the whole trip. After that 3rd cup of boat
coffee, we nearly turned her around and went back to St Augustine to see
if we'd been out drinking with a ghost all night.....

If you meet an old man in a tired boat that needs painting, resistance is
futile. Just follow along for the ride of your life!

Hey, Jake! Tell Melanie I still think she's beautiful!

Thanks, Jake!
Larry