Logbook: Out of Office
I can hear the melody of a Teams call in my sleep. It’s a fairly innocuous melody, but repeated day-after-day since our office disbanded in 2020, it can become a form of torture. Scattered to various corners of the country, video calls have become our regular form of communication for everything from benign meetings to important conversations. I’ve come to know the backgrounds of my co-workers’ offices better than my own home.
All of this is what made a recent cruise through Lauderdale with a number of my colleagues so unique; we had the chance to connect in person, something that proved to be more refreshing than a cold beer after a long day of engine repair. Besides being together in 3-D, our day together was unique in that we set out to experience a new Four Winns TH36 and Formula 457CC, stopping at a couple of the River City’s highly acclaimed dock-and-dine establishments. The day started out formal enough: We all politely recounted the goings-on of our lives and swapped work stories.
Between all of my colleagues and me, we ventured a guess that we’ve collectively visited Ft. Lauderdale, the yachting capital of America, many hundreds of times. Perhaps because of this, because we experience this city annually for the boat show and semi-monthly for sea trials, we never really consider coming here for recreation. Even the lifelong marine journalists aboard ogled all the yachts that we routinely report on as they passed. From center consoles to superyachts, it was fun to be amongst the boats we cover and reveling in being part of the fray.
Besides experiencing a familiar place in a new way, I felt the same about the boats we were on. I was on the Formula when it debuted in Miami, I sea trialed it and saw it in build in Indiana; I felt incredibly lucky to be experiencing it the way it was intended to be used, filled with people, the music on and the wind blowing through our hair. Journalistic impartiality be damned, I was loving that boat.
Same can be said for the Four Winns. I’d been fortunate enough to see the boat debut overseas and again at various U.S. shows. I believed then that the shift to high-end powercats with dayboat DNA was a smart move for the legendary American brand. Sitting in the cockpit lounge with an old industry friend brought to life the idea that a functional boat can also be a hell of a lot of fun.
As the hours and miles, and the occasional adult beverage, ticked away, everyone began to relax, let their guard down and really share what was going on in our lives. We talked about our relationships, our children and our hopes for the future. We all talked about what we had in common, namely our professional passion for being boat snobs. By the time we hit our third stop, we also openly discussed our differences. Aboard, we had vegetarians and deer hunters, Republicans and Democrats, men and women, some people who lived in our country’s largest cities and others that live back in the sticks. We had salespeople who crunch numbers for a living, and editors who require a calculator and helping hand to calculate a tip. We had marketers and wordsmiths.
There was one stretch of the ICW where the Four Winns and the Formula were cruising side by side through a no-wake zone. As we exited the no-wake zone, the two captains made eye contact and nodded. Throttles were jammed forward, pushing everyone back into their seats or staggering their stances to counteract the boats’ momentum shift. Racing alongside one another, the warm wind blasting on smiling faces, all those differences disappeared. For a few minutes at least, we weren’t colleagues on a Teams call but friends in the real world, enjoying time together on the water.
See you on the water,
Dan
[email protected]
@danhardingboating
This article originally appeared in the November 2024 issue of Power & Motoryacht magazine.
View the original article to see embedded media.
Source: https://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/column/logbook-out-of-office
