First Boat

New Years is always a good time to look back. Here is where it all began for me. How about some pictures of other member's first boats?

Nevermind. I give up. Nothing I do, neither clicking the "Insert Image" button nor directly typing the " " makes my pictures appear here. I've been posting on forums for years and posted images here in the past but they will no longer show up.

Here is the user manual. Post #6 should prove particularly useful.



1967 Owens Concorde

CPseudonym said:

Here is the user manual.

Click to expand...

Looks like links are not showing up either.

Well, maybe uploading works.

Roger...you've got four copies of the picture posted now so apparently more successful than you thought.

Roger, I've seen this before and it always is due to slow connection speed (at the moment) on your end. The problem tends to "fix itself" in time. Did my photo, or any of the four copies of yours show up for you?

I definitely don't have pictures from ancient days, but my first boat arose from me complaining that my father's outboard motor on rental fishing boats was way too slow. So, it started with a plan to get a fishing boat but I kept pushing for a runabout and somehow once it was all resolved, he had a nicer fishing boat and I had a 17' SeaRay Bowrider. Prior to that it had been small fishing boats with 9.9 hp motors as that's what both my father and uncle had.

Wifey B: My first boat was through marriage as hubby had a 25' Cobalt Bowrider when we married.

No photos ... my first boat was a 4 man "rubber raft" as we called it then, and purchased with S&H Green stamps when I was about 10. Was so proud ....

My 3 brothers and I built a number of rafts from driftwood and whatever materials we could find. We were aged about 7,8,9 & 10 at the time. They didn't have the fancy seating like yours, Roger. These rafts tended to last only one run at the most, when shooting the rapids on the the Goat and Moyie rivers of SE British Columbia.
We all survived, although I do remember losing my glasses when one of the rafts broke apart in a rough section of water. I got my butt smacked for that.

BandB said:

Roger...you've got four copies of the picture posted now so apparently more successful than you thought.

Click to expand...

This is very weird. I only see one photo that I posted.

A 10 ft sailboat with a lady bug on the sail. Bought it for about $50 with newspaper money. I begged my dad to strap on top of his car to get it the ocean.

My neighbor was a sailor, and returning home when he spotted two young kids in a "piece of $&@ sailboat" on a very windy day in winter. He came in for a closer look and realized it was The kids next door. My mom still enjoys telling the story.

The fun factor is Not proportional to the size of the boat.

Roger Long said:

This is very weird. I only see one photo that I posted.

Click to expand...

Well, on the web site, I see it 4 times plus another 1 in the other post.

I see all the photos. 3 from the OP's original attempt, and one later when he referred to maybe the upload working. That, as Craig mentioned, is often the issue. The upload feature often takes quite a long time, depending on the upload speed of whatever wifi and iNet provider one is using, and how many others on the system are downloading all those movies and other streaming stuff folk are encouraged to do these days, often slowing the whole iNet it seems. If you get impatient, and keep clicking, you sometime end up with multiples of the same post, so patience is a virtue, and just watch for the indication the upload has worked, and then closing the choose files window, before hitting the submit button.

Having just uploaded the pics in the following post, I noted the only sign the upload had completed, which took about 40 seconds, was the upload button flickered and went from blue to white. (Safari on MacBook Air - might be different with Windows) That's the sign to close that 'choose file' window, then remember to click the 'submit' button that is below the window where the pic files are listed.

(That's if using the 'manage attachments' from the advanced posting box. If using the 'insert image' icon at the top of the posting window, the pics have to be saved off the computer at some remote site like 'drop-box' or 'FlickR', and the URL for that pic then included as prompted.)

As to the original thread subject, my first boating attempts were also sadly unrecorded. One was a magnificent raft, which even had a pointy bow, constructed when we lived on a farm. I made a boat-shaped and planked floor frame, then wired every empty gas and weed spray drum I could find under it. I then made a tiller, and we made paddles. It was great on the river that edged the farm, as we could paddle up river, then tiller steer her down on the current. We had a great time with it, until a massive flood one summer left it lodged 30 feet up a tree. As far as i know it's still there.

I then got a hankering for sailing, when I found if I rowed our uncles dinghy upwind at the bay where he had a holiday cottage, holding a large piece of ply sheeting up, and using an oar for the tiller, made for a neat windblown trip back downwind.

Later when I had a young family, (all this in NZ before we moved to Queensland Australia), we had two what we called 'trailer yachts'... a Tasman 20, and Gazelle 26, which we brought over to Qld with us actually, but found Moreton Bay not all that sailboat friendly. These I do have pics of, and are self explanatory. When we needed more room more privacy, (by then living in Queensland), we moved into our precent boat, (see avatar), via the Resort 35 in the last 2 pics.

That Resort 35, (big brother to AusCan's Cuddles 30 actually), was really interesting, as it managed to pack into it's length, in a very cunning way, sleeping for ten people, albeit quite cosily. This was achieved via 4 bunks in the bow forecabin, a double master to port, (with ensuite loo), a larger bathroom with second loo to starboard of that, then moving aft, a few steps up from the for'd sleeping quarters, a generous galley and dinette in the saloon, with another double under the dinette, and the dinette made into another double. Then there was a quite generous cockpit with seating for ten round their trademark rounded canoe style stern section. They were popular charter boats for this reason.

Somebodys new boat

Like many boaters, my first command was not a boat I owned or built. My grandmother allowed me to take this craft on a solo voyage along the lake shore propelled by a stick.

My first boat was a 10' Ouchita jonboat and a pair of oars bought with lawn cutting money. The next year bought a new 4 hp Evinrude Yachtwin for $231. That changed everything. It would plane off and cruise about 10 mph if I put a cinderblock on the bow seat. The 3 gallon tank seemed to last forever. Pictures are back in NJ in an album somewhere.

Ours was an Old Town canoe. First power boat:

No pics, but my first boat was a 7' plywood dink a friend and I found

on the Touhy Ave Beach in Chicago when we were about 5 yrs old. The hull had no bottom, so when we got some more friends to help carry it home, we nailed a couple of boards across the bottom and hauled it around the neighborhood on my Radio Flyer wagon. One day it might be a Pirate Ship, the next it would be the Battleship Missouri, or even an amphibious assault boat. At about age 10 Dad help me rebuild the dink as a sailboat for which Mom sewed a sail. It was a terrible sailboat, but taught many lessons on boat building and sailing.

Another early boat was half of an aluminum belly tank from a WW2 Fighter aircraft. We usually claimed it was for a P-51, as they were the best. Dad made me add a pair of 1-gal Mineral Spirits cans on an outrigger thwart to keep it from rolling and filling. We also had a 5-gal steel can inside the tank, under the thwart. It proved to be a terrible one-boy paddle boat, but nonetheless taught valuable lessons about stability and positive flotation.