I’ve been around boats all my life.  They have been mostly small boats up to 19 feet.  One day about 10 years ago, my wife and I were walking the docks at Julington Creek Marina and at the end of the dock was this big (50 foot) Chris Craft antique boat with a kindly white-bearded gentleman on board.  As we stood there mooning over the boat we heard a voice from the aft deck saying “why don’t you come aboard and see the inside”.  We couldn’t resist and spent the next hour wandering through what we thought was the most beautiful boat we had ever seen.  Our friendly white-bearded gentleman turned out to be Carl Pegel of Sorry Dog Marine and he proceeded to inform us that this boat was for sale and it’s a great deal.  We tell him we’ll think about it and then, on the way home, tried to figure a way to afford it.

The boat was a wooden boat with all kinds of beautiful teak and mahogony’ all highly polished and looking great.  At this point, I was still rather naive as to the joys (pain) of owning an old (1957) wooden boat.  We started negotiating to buy the boat and after a normal period of time, came to an agreeable price.  I told Carl I wanted 1 more look around with my friend, who was very experienced in large boats, before we signed on the dotted line.  Carl told us where the key was and reminded us to not flip any switches and we happily set out to visit ‘my new boat’.  We got to the marina and were walking along the dock to the boat when I turned to Gary and said “they must have moved it, I don’t see it”.  We kept on walking and finally saw the boat.  I said “it must be low tide since it is sitting a lot lower than it was before”.  Then I noticed that the rest of the boats were still high on the water.  By the time we got to the end of the dock we realized what had happened. (you guessed it).  She had sunk all the way to the decks and was sitting on the bottom.  It was a sad sight, but a feeling of relief was spreading through my mind, mainly because one more day and I would have owned a sunken boat.

If I had left well enough alone, I would still be counting by blessings and I would not have known the joys of owning a wood boat.  But I called Carl and told him “the boat had gone down”.  After spending 30 minutes trying to explain that this wasn’t a joke, I made my big mistake.  I told Carl that I also assumed the price would go down substantially.  He agreed (being the salesman that he is) and I spent the next 2 months negotiating on buying a old, sunken, wooden boat.  As you can tell from the title of this tale (and against everyone’s advice, including Carl’s) I bought the boat for $25,000 and I thought I was getting a bargain.  I will spare you the tales of the year spent working on the boat to get it shipshape or the $150,000 I spent on this ‘deal’.  I will, however, jump to the end of this tale and say that we ended up giving the boat to charity.  It was purchased by another wooden boat lover who wanted to live on her on the Alabama River.  On the trip to Alabama, she sunk near Alabama in the Gulf.  Not content to leave it at that, she was raised again and her bottom completely redone and fiberglassed and then continued her trip. Twenty miles from her destination, she sunk again when some of the new boards came loose and cracked the fiberglass.  At least there is a happy ending, she was refloated and taken to her destination and now sits in water too shallow to sink and has become a floating, though grounded, home.

The boat’s name was ‘MorningStar’ and she taught me that everyone should own a wooden boat…once, because it makes you appreciate the boats that aren’t wood.

Happy Boating!!!