(Or, for Immediate Relief, Just Get Out on the Water) 

Whenever I want to feel better, fast, I head straight for the water. The simple act of motoring across the bay or just floating around, especially aboard a vintage boat, is the finest therapy for anything that ails you. Whether you’re aboard a vintage runabout, a flat-bottomed skiff, a classic-glass cruiser or some other craft, you can learn to slow down, restore priorities and simply experience our most precious commodity, freedom, when you are on the water. 

My belief is that you can live longer, and certainly live more serenely, with lots of self-prescribed time on the water. (The correct dosage is an overdose; with anything this good, how can you get too much?) You can also extend your life through the feel-better process of resurrecting rotten boats. Giving reprieves to hulks that will otherwise die a slow and ignominious death is nothing but good—for you as well as for the boat. 

Last weekend I once again experienced the curative effects of being on the water. Together with some fellow classic-boat nuts, I meandered the length of Puget Sound, from Port Townsend to Olympia and back. While the idea of cruising 220 miles in a few days may not sound relaxing to some, the experience only confirmed why I need to spend more time on the water, running alone or with friends, feeling the unique calm that comes while gliding across an open bay, or into a hidden cove, wind fluttering through what’s left of my hair. At those moments, I experience something close to total happiness—far more satisfying than a great cup of coffee or a hearty microbrew. I’m telling you, life just doesn’t get much better! 

Of course, you don’t have to be on the water for days or weeks to escape the pressures that can choke a poor, land-locked soul. Even brief doses in the therapy pool can maintain your sense of calm, gently tilting your perspective on what’s important, and possibly giving you a better sense of what you want to do with your life. 

For me, one of life’s challenges has been to simplify, finding ways to get along with less, to use fewer resources, to spend more time working with my hands and, of course, to enjoy more hours on the water. As a person who spent much of his life as an urban workaholic, I learned in my late 50s and early 60s that earning and spending more money was not the answer. After decades of self-inflicted pressure, we migrated to a small island in northern Puget Sound, substantially unplugging from the mainland (or, as they say here on the island, “leaving America behind”). 

I am here to tell you—without hard evidence, but a sincere conviction—that we can live longer if we continue collecting and restoring rotten boats, and if we also spend more time on the water. We will be happier if we are able, growing older, to somehow shed more trappings of contemporary American life and find ways to be on the water with old boats, especially those we restore or maintain with our own hands. These are boats that not only get us onto the water, but transport us to another realm, where we experience calm, where the natural world is the world, and where we can find the freedom we all seek and deserve. Being on the water may not cure all diseases, but it cannot hurt. 

I love ACBS and everything it has done for the preservation of classic boats, and I sometimes wonder why so many members’ boats are not used more often. (As a member, do you feel you’re spending enough time on the water—and do you share my feelings regarding the restorative effects of being afloat…regardless of the kind of boat?) While I’ve been lucky enough to have enjoyed a lifetime of boating, my only regret might be the middle years, during which I often felt boatless and consumed by a career in the fast lane. 

As a kid I was on the water constantly, free and absolutely, obsessively happy with the experience. As an old man, I am in pursuit of the best revenge, which involves a return to the wonders of boating as a child—in this case, boating constantly until I drop. Considering the size of my project-boat fleet, I’m guessing that’ll be a long time from now.

by Marty Loken, Pacific Northwest Chapter. Originally printed in the summer 2006 ACBS Rudder.

4 Comments

  1. Interesting choice of an article… I truly enjoy the concept!
    While we enjoyed having Marty in our chapter, he has not been a member of the ACBS for many years.

  2. My 71 year old self and my 1953 Penn Yan Trailboat have the same take on Freedom and Rejuvenation on the waters of the Adirondacks.

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