Logbook: Family Ties

My wife Karen’s family is filled with die-hard Mets fans. From the time I started dating Karen and began attending family functions, the guys could be found in the backyard congregating around the cooler or grill and gossiping about impending trades, recapping the last weeks games, and of course reliving the storied 86 season.

In those early years, I would do my best to seem like I cared about sports and offered consistent condolences. The truth is, I hate baseball, always have. To this day, I’m pretty sure I hold my town’s little league strike-out record.

One summer afternoon while the guys painstakingly recapped a game they’d all watched the night before, Karen’s uncle Billy offered me a beer and asked what boats I’d been on lately; he owned a series of boats growing up on Lake George and spent time working on the locks on the Hudson River. A kindred spirit hiding in plain sight!

Over the ensuing years we would pass the hours at family functions talking about boats, boatbuilders and fishing. When he bought a Grady-White a few years ago we snuck out of a Thanksgiving dinner (that he was hosting no less) to check out the boat. Drinking a couple cold beers on a Grady instead of playing Left, Right, Center for the 100th time … that’s worth a couple nights on the couch in my book.

A couple months ago he got my attention when he sent a link to a 30-something Tiara that he was seriously considering. This was huge family news as far as I was concerned. He’s a serious fisherman who recently repowered his Grady, what was this all about?

As is often the case, he randomly happened upon a beautiful Tiara for sale at his boatyard with a striking Bentley Blue hull. That pop of color even had his wife, Mary Ellen’s attention. That boat would get snatched up but a fire was now burning, they were on the hunt for a Tiara of their own, something that could be fished but also used for longer cruising as they look down the road towards retirement and also work to convince their grown and college-aged children to come home and visit.

When I heard he was taking a 2016 Tiara 3200 for a sea trial in Long Island, I jumped in my truck to join. This was my kinda family outing. In truth, I didn’t have all that much to offer, the broker seemed trustworthy, and the boat performed as well as her reputation had been reported. There was one bit of Power & Motoryacht irony, however; the broker sold one of the late Editor-in-Chief Richard Thiel’s boats and famed columnist and designer Tom Fexas used to keep his boat at the dock we were on.

Billy and Mary Ellen would buy the boat the following week. Their shakedown cruise would be from the North Shore of Long Island through New York Harbor to Wantagh Park Marina, the same marina that I called home most of my life. I was thankful to be invited on this cruise, after all, how often do you get the chance to go home again?

The April morning of our trip was warm and sunny with hardly a breath of wind. We blasted across a nearly empty Long Island Sound at 24 knots and quickly made it to Manhattan. The sight of the city from the water never gets old. This was both Billy and Mary Ellen’s first time taking in this waterway from their own boat and it was a special moment. Mary Ellen was taking so many videos and photos with her phone, I jokingly asked if she was shooting a documentary.

The solitude we had on the East River came from an abrupt halt as the Statue of Liberty rose on the horizon. Ferries, container ships, cruise ships, sailboats etc. reminded us that our delivery was far from over, it was time to pay attention. As made our way out of New York Harbor and into the Atlantic, we were greeted by our second major obstacle: a wall of dense white. We’d been running with the radar on and were casually preparing for this possibility, but we all had hoped the fog would have burned off. For the next couple hours, we pushed through 2- to 3-foot seas and less than half a mile of visibility while straining our eyes all around us.

We all breathed a sigh of relief as our destination inlet appeared before us. One challenge left, I thought to myself as we made our way into the marina. Despite being a boater most of his life, Billy was new to a boat with twin inboards. Thankfully, a near empty marina and calm conditions allowed us to back into the slip drama-free and even get in some extra practice for good measure.

Cracking a beer after tying up, it was hard not to be nostalgic. Wrapping up one heck of a first shakedown cruise one dock away from where my family culminated so many adventures of our own, I was glad to create another fond memory in a place that meant so much to me. I can’t wait to hear about their cruising adventures at the next family party. Let’s go, Mets!

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This article originally appeared in the October 2023 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.

Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/logbook-family-ties