MIDLIFE CRISIS

After chucking my engineering career in 1976 CJM and I moved to Pontiac. I worked alongside my brother and dad for a couple years, but it wasn't working out. My dad really wanted to retire and my brother wanted to get into the heating & cooling business. So, on May 1, 1978 we made a deal to buy out my dad & brother and take over the dock. Now we had lots of boats all to ourselves but we needed to rent them and there was no time to go out anyway. During those days at the dock we had 6 aluminum boats with small motors, a ski boat and a couple pontoons. We also got in the boat and motor business in 1985 so now had some new boats on hand. However, they really couldn't be used and there was still no time to use one. Besides not having the extra money for a personal boat it just didn't make sense to have money invested in a non-income producing asset. My motto was "if it don't make dollars, it don't make sense." CJM's dad, John Henry, started running Champion bassboats when we were a dealer. He was in his 60's now and always wanted a boat that would run his age and then some. That trend continued until he was about 75 and the boats just couldn't keep up :)

Our first personal boat, one that we did not have to share with other family members or was not for rent or not for sale did not come until 1996. I was working the St. Louis boat show in February that year. I had been thinking it would be fun to have a sailboat but didn't want just a small kicker motor. I was cruising the show one day before it opened and low and behold I found it. A 26' MacGregor motorsailer. You could trailer this rig and it would handle up to a 50 hp outboard. Just what I was looking for. CJM and I went to Florida a little later that year and the guy showing the boat in St. Louis actually lived in Coral Gables and his dealership was there. We stopped by and looked at the boat and ordered one that day. MacGregor's are built in California. The dealer had a guy that would drive out and pick boats up for him in a Cadillac with a hitch on it. The dealer met the delivery guy in Pontiac and rigged up the sails, etc. and a couple days later we launched it. He showed me how to raise the sails and gave me a 15 minute sailing lesson and we were on our way. By the way, this was the first time I had ever been in a sailboat. We appropriately named it "Midlife Crisis."

We learned to sail the summer of '96 on Bull shoals Lake or at least enough to keep us out of trouble or maybe just enough to get us in to trouble. Dave Relyea was the sailing guru out of Pontiac and every time he saw us out he would sail circles around us and yell advice to us. Once he bailed off his boat onto ours to give us some hands on advice. When he thought we were OK to go it alone he bailed back off our boat and Loudonna picked him up.

We took the boat and the kids, Jabet now 17 and Cal 15, to Sanibel during Thanksgiving for our first adventure to the ocean with our new pastime. Being in the marina and boat business for years, I had trailered boats all over Missouri to boat shows and deliveries and thought nothing of heading out for Florida with MLC. Before we got to Mountain Home I knew we were in for a long, long, long, long, LONG haul. After a grueling first day, we made it to Nashville. We thought, if we could find a place to store the boat we would leave it there and pick it up on the way home. The boat had been trailered all the way from California on it's single axle trailer with brakes without incident. Of course we added a 60 Hp Mercury and loaded it with gear. We were towing with a suburban which should have handled it, but it was all over the place. We decided to stick it out, so we redistributed some of the weight and two days later we arrived at Sanibel. We were anxious to get the boat in the water, but we found when we tried to raise the mast that one of the bolts that holds it when traveling had seized and we could not get it loose. We didn't have a hacksaw, but we did have some wrenches. I just could not get it loose and a really big guy walked by and asked if we needed some help. He twisted the bolt in two and we were on our way. By the way, I now have a hacksaw in my tool bag on the boat. The rest of the trip was great, including the sailing. We spent Thanksgiving Day on the ocean sailing and had turkey sandwiches for lunch. The trip home was also not nearly as bad with the weight better distributed, but the first thing I did when we got there was put a tandem axle on the trailer. Next up...THE KEYS!!!