Step into the light of yesterday and see what comes up for you in recalling your early boating days. Smells, sights, sounds, and people will likely appear in recalling the experience. I hope your longest memories of boating associate with the good.
If early boating days for you happened in childhood, it can leave an imprinting much like popular music has for many on their teen years - so like I noted I hope early boat life was on the positive side for you. More than just a few kids have had to overcome frightening or unpleasant boating times where parents or adults neglected to make boating a great outdoor experience for the little people on board.
Somebody must have done something right for me, because I have never said no to spending time on the water since I could walk - and that was over 50 years ago. Have boat will travel. I must have been an easy mark for boating though because from the onset anything in a boat was agreeable to me. Even the regular tin can baling of my Grandpa’s leaky cedar strip rowboat was a welcome chore. Perhaps it was the brawny petro smell of the Scott-Atwater hanging with its three horses on the stern that gave me a needed focus to finish the job, so I could all the sooner be scooting over to Donut Island for a turtle search. Well ok, just anything to get me scooting.
Now some ten boats later over the years, I am no less mesmerized by the magic carpet experience of being on the water. Whether it’s a carpet of cedar, fibergalss, or aluminum, boating can be one of those lifelong activites that extends through the years connecting a whole series of times and people, and of course places. And like hiking, it has an egalitarian flavor to it as well which appeals to me. Even the smallest of budgets can find some way to get onto water otherwise graced by the gilded boats.
Find some water. And remember the little people.