The Fishing Boat
Many years ago a friend of George's owned a fishing boat berthed at Moss Landing, California — the fishing village about 20 minutes west of San Juan Bautista. They made many trips together out on the ocean. As George put it, handling the boat and being out on the water was like dying and going to heaven.
This is the boat my friend owned. It is old and does not look like much, but I loved going out on the ocean with it. In those days I was flying and knew something about navigation — which my friend did not — so he would talk me into coming along. That way we could go out beyond where we could see the coast and still find our way home.
The boat had a four-cylinder engine that did not always want to run, a generator that worked only intermittently, and it leaked badly. Because there were so many large steel fishing weights aboard — the size of shot puts, probably 15 to 20 pounds each — their mass caused the compass to read incorrectly. But otherwise it was fine.
I was able to explain to the owner that the fishing weights were affecting the compass accuracy. To demonstrate I took two of the balls and moved them close to the compass, which caused the needle to follow the direction of the weights. After the demonstration he was more careful about where he stored them.
We did get stranded one day beyond the horizon, out of sight of land, when the generator quit working, the battery went dead, and we were dead in the water without another boat in sight. We were stuck for many hours, but just before sundown a fishing boat came within sight and we were able to attract their attention. They came alongside and towed us into port.
My friend had bought the boat hoping to make money from it, but that never happened — it simply wasn't reliable enough to take out for several days at a time as a working fishing boat. But I enjoyed every trip immensely.
