EDITOR'S NOTE: Today, we offer Part Five of a seven-day series on boat-related vacations that leave the steering, cooking and maintenance to somebody else. For more about this series and why we did it, please see the Room 13 blog.
"This is House Boat Seven coming up on Dead Boy Creek, do you read me?"
I never thought I'd hear my 9-year-old bookworm, Spencer, barking words like that into a nautical phone, but he was the Captain, steering our 8-ton, 44-foot houseboat along the backwaters of an unspoiled river in northwest Florida.
"Repeat, this is House Boat Seven, about to drop anchor for the night," he said. "Today has been amazingly awesome!"
Our amazingly awesome adventure had begun two months before, when I rebelled. Did our family really have to spend our entire Florida vacation in the company of Great Aunt Minnie? Couldn't we do something down there besides endlessly sit around a geriatric pool? I called a chum for suggestions.
"˜A HOUSEBOAT, GOSH DURN IT'
Prescott was something of a character, a world-class adventurer who had settled in Florida after years as hang-gliding instructor, champion fisherman, author of unpredictable prose, ex-boyfriend of a professional bricklayer and unsuccessful Orlando mayoral candidate (his email address still reads "peasantrevolt.com" – the tagline for his campaign).
Daniel Asa Rose"They give you forty minutes of instructions and set you out on the river by yourselves."
"Prescott, my family wants to do something out of the ordinary in Florida this winter," I said.
"Rent a houseboat, gosh durn it!" he drawled. I could visualize him leaning back like a yokel, sucking on his teeth as though he had not been raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. "They give you forty minutes of instruction and set you out on the river by yourselves, with a nautical map to go anywhere you want." "Isn't that a bit scary?" I said. But even as the words left my mouth I knew I was hooked.
There are many ways to get on the water for a vacation without pulling your boat from the slip. One simple strategy is to charter or rent someone else's boat, and leave the maintenance and upkeep to them.
Two months later, we were bidding Minnie adieu at her St. Pete poolside and charging up the Florida coast. When we started getting passed on the right by pick-ups (one hour) and seeing signs for boiled peanuts (two hours), we figured we were sufficiently off the beaten path. When we spied sawed-off tree trunks holding down tin roofs (three hours), we began to realize just how un-touristy our vacation was going to be.
But when we turned into the tiny hamlet of Suwanee, Florida, in the midst of a national wildlife refuge, we were both jubilant and relieved. Suwanee is like Key West before the day-trippers took over, a picturesque settlement overgrown with cottonwood trees and run through by canals. All the houses are built on stilts to protect them from periodic floods, and enclosed by screened-in porches to protect them from the flying varmints called skeeters. Luckily, we were there in March, when the air was mild and buzz-free.
MINIMAL INSTRUCTION
Our first glimpse of the houseboat at Miller's Boatyard produced shrieks of glee from kids and parents alike. It was roomy and filled with light. There were comfy bunks and futons everywhere, clean linens, a marine toilet, a hot shower and enough sliding glass doors to nullify even a whisper of mildew smell. In the bow, a gas grill sat opposite a plastic picnic table, and up the ladder a sun deck ran nearly the length of the boat. The galley had more landlubber amenities than Prescott had let on, including fridge, microwave, and toaster. The radio in the galley may have sported a fork for an antenna, but it looked able to fetch us NPR to accompany our meals afloat.
