The Boating Life

One day on the long weekend, Peter and I had a choice: wash the windows or go boating? Hmmm…

I grew up with a boat. We had a summer cottage on Lake Ontario and my dad bought a boat to go along with it. It was a small runabout with a 35 horse power motor. In those days, that was fast. Until our neighbour got a 50.

My brother inherited that boat and had it for many years. My cousin bought a similar kind of boat when he had a young family. They used it mainly for water skiing. And another cousin and her husband moved up in the boating world and bought a small yacht – with enough room to travel and stay overnight. Being on the water in a boat seems to be in our family genes.

So I was sorry to learn recently that both cousins have decided it’s time to give up their boats and stay on land. They cite rising gas costs and storage issues. But it’s also probably about the loss of energy and stamina as we age. For boat trips, you have to kneel down to untie the boat from the dock, step off the dock and into the seats far below, bend over to check the gas level in the motor, wrench your neck to back out of your boat slip. You basically need Cirque du Soleil training.

In Toronto there are easier options for water travel. You can go to Harbourfront and pay for a sightseeing cruise along the shoreline. You can take a ferry over to the island and have a picnic. You can join one of the many area yacht clubs, make friends, and then ask to borrow their boat. Or you can go to the Boat Show in the winter and tour lots of fancy yachts with their gold faucets in the bathrooms and luxurious sofas in the living area.

But Peter and I have all the options beaten. We have our own kayak waiting for us in the garage.

It’s easy peasy. Peter pulls it down the street propped up on little wheels at the back. Wen we get to the river, we launch it easily on a gently sloping boat ramp. We wear life jackets – for safety and for warmth! I put on my water shoes, walk to the front of the kayak, and shimmy backwards to plop into my seat. Peter steps in from the back as he pushes us off. There is no gas, no steering wheel, no speedometer. As long as we rememer the paddles, we are good to go.

But on Canada Day we ran into an unexpected problem. The river was full of water craft: kayaks like ours, canoes, sea-dos, paddle boards, inflatable dinghies, even small yachts. There were boats parked along both shorelines and several lanes of traffic in between. Drivers kept changing lanes wthout signaling. The oncoming traffic waved their arms frantically. Other drivers suddenly backed up to look at the scenery, or did a U-Turn in the middle of the stream, or just stopped to talk to other boaters. It was confusion. It was chaos. It was a Toronto traffic jam on the Humber River!

But it was still better than washing windows.

Sue