My Boat

Here is a picture of my boat.

Not really, but in my head I have owned this boat for several years.

This is a 1939 Hacker 55ft excursion craft. She has a Honduran Mahogany hull with stainless steel uppers. She is powered by twin Allison V12 engines and can get up and do 70 miles an hour. She is known as the "Thunderbird", and if you have ever heard her run, you know she is aptly named.

She resides in Lake Tahoe, and was custom designed and built as a commuter craft for the lake. To my eye and mind there has never been a finer melding of Art Deco styling and Naval Architecture. It makes me proud to be a human being just to know such a thing exists.

I am also thankful that I don't really own it. It is more boat worship than boat lust. Although I own it in my head, I don't have to do the endless hours of maintenance or pay the fees to have someone else do it. In my mind it sits there ready for me to turn the key and press the starter button, listen to the gynormous engines spur and sputter and catch, smooth out and roar to life.

Engage the drive and back it slowly out of the boathouse, take a leisurely aft port turn, change over to forward, ease on the throttles and get it up on plane.

Hand the wheel over to my trusted pilot, and go back for coctails and cigars and finger food. The temperature is always 78 degrees, the sun always shines, the conversation is always stimulating, the food world class.

The boat leaves at six. Be there in your best bib n' tucker.