My earliest non-motorized watercraft memory

 I like to think of myself as a boatman. Like, heady cyclists call themselves wheelmen. Well, at least I once heard Jeremiah Bishop use the word wheelman. So, I'll use the word boatman. Or, "boat guy." I'm most definitely a boat guy. But not a motorized boat guy. I don't like motors. I do drive a gasoline powered car, but I'll probably switch to electric when the lease is up. My partner drives electric and it's pretty sweet. I'm getting distracted here...

My earliest memory of non-motorized watercraft is canoeing in Western Maine. Growing up we used to go to Rangeley, Maine for two weeks every August. We would stay at North Camps, which is still in existence. I now understand that this was all a ploy by my father who just wanted a place to go fishing. Not entirely though. We ended up coordinating with other families and the same four families would go up every year. There was an unrelated family that had a son named Adam that I became friends with and I would see him every year. He and I were kind of nerds and liked playing the SolarQuest board game.

Annnnnnyway, as part of this two week trip we would do outdoors stuff. We stayed in this old cabin, which was basically an old sporting camp. My brother and I had the whole upstairs to ourselves, which had like six or seven beds. Apparently later in the year during hunting season they would all be occupied by hunters. This was most definitely rustic accommodations. Not fancy. We played a lot of ping pong outside at a warped green table by the water where the wind would blow the ball off the table. We swam at the beach and built rock walls by the shore. 

We went hiking locally at Bald Mountain, Aziscohos Mountain, and Saddleback Mountain. I did not like hiking. Might have had to do with my lousy knees (I now take glucosamine chondroitin every day and don't have chronic leg pain). I don't like getting bug bites, and I would get a lot of mosquito bites. My parents also aren't exactly the crunchy type, nor gear dorks like I am, and so I never had real hiking boots. I remember descending the ski hill at Saddleback wearing Adidas Sambas - the same shoes I wore to play indoor soccer. I just remember the hikes being long, hot, sweaty, buggy, and that I was slow and that the other kids were way faster than I was. It looked like this -

Credit https://tallerthanthetrees.us/2022/08/aziscohos-mountain/

But we did go canoeing. I have an extraordinarily vivid memory or rounding a corner in one of the wilderness rivers there, probably the Kennebago River or the Rangeley River, and coming within a few feet of a full size adult male bull moose drinking water at the riverside. Tthis huge head with antlers lifted up as we passed by, with water dripping from it. Absolutely bonkers. Will probably never experience anything like that again unless I move to Maine or start spending significant parts of my summers there and paddling the rivers more.

We would rent canoes from North Camps. I remember dented, old, beat up, red paint peeling off, aluminum boats. It was a hassle getting them out of the water and up to the bank to the road. But pretty cool that our folks took us out to do that. The boats would have looked like this -

I also remember once paddling across Rangeley Lake. The ol' Google Maps Distance Calculator tells me that the shortest route we would have done would have been a little more than a mile, but it's possible that we went to the far corner, I don't know.

Thanks https://www.daftlogic.com/projects-google-maps-distance-calculator.htm

So there ya go, that's my earliest memory of sending it in a boat that didn't have a motor or engine of any kind, where we used our arms or our legs to move the boat. I'm gonna work on other posts about my upbringing and background. I gotta talk about sailing, rowing, sea kayaking, and whitewater kayaking. More to come.

Easing into it

 Unreal - I just read the last post that I published in 2019 and it was about kayak fishing. Time is a flat circle. Or whatever that means. Point being - the last time I wrote a meaningful personal blog it was October 2019 and I had kayak fishing on my mind. Now fast forward 6 plus years and guess what - I'm once again obsessed with kayak fishing. Can't make this stuff up. 

Here's a photo of the boat and my stuff strewn about everywhere on the beach at Sandy Neck in Barnstable Harbor from last Saturday.

I'll get right to the point - in May I took possession of a Vibe Kayaks Hydra 130. This new model was just released in April I believe. I'm not sure how I found out about it. It's possible I read about it in Kayak Angler magazine. I had been searching for a 13-14 foot boat for fishing out of for months. This one fit the bill. I bought it and it arrived a couple weeks later. I've been obsessed with it.

It's actually getting a little out of control. I'm trying to rein it in. Well, not really. I'm beyond stoked about it. Having so much fun. Let me see what I want to talk about first here...

The blog is back y'all

 Sup y'all. Been a minute. I've been writing for the boys over at BlogFlyFish.com for the past few years, but I've been slacking.  I gotta get back on it. In the meantime, I've at least repurchased davesplat.com (pretty dope that noone ever bought the domain so I got a screamin' deal on it). But I'm struggling figuring out how to connect the two. I might just leave it as is and rock the old davesplat.blogspot.com like the old school days.

I got some cleanup to do, fix some broken links etc. But I'm stoked to be back. Maybe this will motivate me to write a fly fish blog too. Let's see how this goes...