Anything as fun as speedboats on a hot summer day?
Growing-up as a boy there was a rule in my family, on a Friday afternoon we were to be at the marina, with all supplies, food, gas and cooler jammed with beverages on ice and ready to depart the moment Dad arrived after work. We’d all jump in the speedboats, cast-off, idle out of the marina and accelerate one good sprint out to deep water, then stop in the middle of the lake and dive in. for the first of endless swims in the Okanagan Lake.
My Dad loved building speedboats, and he helped many of his friends custom build V8’s engines into wooden hulled boats to make water ski boats. About that time outboard engines were becoming very popular on Fiberglas hulled boats, these light boats could go faster too (quickly). Then there were many jet boats and the occasional drag boats, all of them could be called speedboats and my home-lake had hundreds of them, in all sizes and configurations. Nowadays, of course, there are thousands.
Spending the summers out on the lake boating, was a way of life for me and the weekend excursions brought our little craft, to every cove and bay, all the islands and all the best beaches. Eventually, as a family, in a variety of boats spanning two decades, we had discovered the lake from end to end
As a teenager water skiing was my thing and every summer we’d go looking for glass, that’s what we called perfectly calm water when it has no surface disturbance, it’s very rare, either in the early morning or if you’re lucky, right on dusk, that’s when nature’s magic really happens, once in a million but If you try some time, you just might find, you get what you need to have allot of fun in speedboats.
Never tired of ripping up the smooth water behind the boat on a tow rope, slicing back and forth on a slalom ski and jumping the wake with ease. Now I’m a spectator and the variety of new tow rope watersports blows-my-mind and I’m shocked that some of these things were invented, as we thought we’d thought of it all, in terms of what you could do behind a boat, on the end of the rope. Even during the night time, people wake surf with lights and speakers blaring the tunes of your choice.
Hour of after joyful hour was spent our cruising on speedboats but we burned all of gasoline, now politically incorrect. As life went on there have been many other lakes and many other boats and the thrill never fades, the fun never ends, when the lake is calm in a good speedboat, guess that’s why they’re known as a “pleasure craft”.
Peachland Photo By erwlas – Flickr, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28036855
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