I've Been Lost Now Days Uncounted...

Not me. I'm not lost. But the boat is long gone. It was a light weight 12 foot Penn Yan Cartopper, canvas covered cedar planking over steam bent ribs all varnished to a fare-thee-well. Gorgeous! It weighed under 100 pounds and looked so nice on our Volks Wagen bug. We bought it in New Bedford before the move to Miami and fished for bass and pickerel in the nearby ponds and stripers and blues in the harbor. We never went very far so oars sufficed to get us around. I remember that we paid $119 for the boat wich I named Tarpon II. The original Tarpon I'd sold a couple of years earlier in one of those foolish moments when you tell yourself that since you don't fish anymore...but I always do come back to fishing.

After moving to Miami I picked up a used 5 HP Johnson outboard motor. The standard transom height is supposedly 15 inches but this boat was only not quite 13 so I built up the center a little and added spray rails on the sides. Boats of this construction, typical mostly of canoes, are very strong for their weight but were really designed for a climate where they see a few months use in the summer and stay inside most of the year. Rain, humidity, and constant year round use took its toll. My friend Darryl Seideman took it over to his house with the good intention of replacing some rotting wood but the extent of the damage was greater than we'd anticipated. Stephanie and I bought a 17 foot fiberglass canoe and I constructed a side bracket for the Johnson. Now my friend Dave has the canoe. I lost track of Darryl years ago. A 17 ft. center console sits on a trailer in the driveway.