The Desire for Boats and DNA

Maybe the DNA that makes us Boat People allows us to hear the Boat’s seductive song

By David Nichols

I’m not sure, but for boat lovers, the desire for boats is probably woven into our DNA, and this desire unmasks itself at a very early age. It certainly did for me.

My first boat was a squeezed and shaped bar of 99 and 44-percent-pure Ivory Soap. I circumnavigated the bathtub in that bar of soap; many times. On those circumnavigations, I fought off pirates and cannibals. There were lots of pirates and quite a few cannibals, not to mention a few sea monsters. I had just finished Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe. Actually, my aunt read both books to me.

As my world expanded, so did my boats. I lived less than a block from Waller Creek, a typical central Texas creek that, in 1949, was pure and unpolluted. My boats were rafts of River Cane lashed together with kite string. The design was heavily influenced by The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which my aunt was also reading to me.

The raft voyages were much longer than the earlier circumnavigations and generally ended around lunchtime. Pirates, cannibals, and the occasional sea monster had migrated to Waller Creek and seamlessly blended with Huck, Tom, and Jim.

Then, in 1950 I discovered the rest of the world when my father took me to see the Thor Heyerdal film Kon Tiki. More accurately, I discovered that boats could take you much farther than a short trip down Waller Creek. For me, the most important lesson from Kon Tiki was we were building the same boat! My tiny raft of Texas River Cane was the same boat as Kon Tiki; it was just a matter of scale! If Thor Heyerdal could do it, so could I. Forget the Mississippi and Huck and Tom and Jim; we were talking the Pacific Ocean, which was, by my 1950s calculations, just a little West of El Paso.

If something is part of your DNA, it doesn’t go away, even when you discover that the Pacific Ocean isn’t just a little West of El Paso. You never forget that boats are the magic carpet, and the desire stays with you as you grow. In 1952 little rafts of River Cane, the small version of Kon Tiki, are replaced by a 16-foot Lone Star aluminum boat and five-horsepower Johnson outboard motor. Voyages become overnight adventures sleeping on the shore of a lake, the largest body of water I’d ever seen. The Pacific Ocean is still a very, very long way West of El Paso, and the Gulf of Mexico is somewhere way South of Austin, probably around Mexico. But, who cares because you can catch fish and cook it over a fire, and you can just dip your cup in the lake when you want a drink. It was just Huck, Tom, Jim, my father, and me; no pirates or cannibals, and the Loch Ness monster was in Loch Ness.

Boats always seem to find their way into the lives of boat people. I’ve never figured out whether we draw the boats to us or boats are powerful magnets that relentlessly pull us to them. I lean toward the latter.

Maybe the DNA that makes us Boat People allows us to hear the Boat’s seductive song. Sometimes I think the song is similar to The Siren’s song that Ulysses wanted to hear, just not as destructive.

Over the years I’ve had a large number of boats. Some have been solid companions that carried me on wonderful adventures. Others were like an astoundingly beautiful, incredibly high-maintenance mistress; the sex was fantastic but exhausting and unsustainable. I don’t think a Boat Person exists who hasn’t had “that” boat at some point.

Boat People pass that DNA on. My father passed it to me, and my son certainly has the boat gene, and he also has “that'“ boat at the moment. My daughter seems to have avoided the boat gene, but it can skip a generation. My three-year-old grandson seems to prefer toy boats over other bathtub toys but has yet to circumnavigate the tub. It will be small voyages at first, then on to extended adventures and bigger and bigger boats. •SCA•