Underwater thoughts - A Fascination for Fish: Adventures of an Underwater Pioneer - page 11

plus working part-time, and I had little money to spend on anything
beyond bare necessities and the cheapest California jug wine. Norman
generously o¤ered to buy most of the equipment and materials; I would
contribute my labor. We decided on an eighteen-foot plywood hull that
would be powered by a seventy-five-horsepower, four-cylinder inboard
marine engine. Buying materials and equipment a little at a time, we
worked on it in our spare time for well over a year.
For me the experience meant an ongoing series of problems to solve,
not the least of which was developing the self-discipline to keep fo-
cused on the dream of the completed boat. There were times when I
became discouraged by the seemingly endless tasks that lay between
the present and our goal. The hundreds of problems to solve during
the construction had their own small rewards, though, and with the
completion of each one there was a sense of accomplishment.
As rewarding as the creative process and the end result were, it's not
an experience I'd want to repeat. Building a boat is about ten times
more work than you think it could possibly be. By this time I had owned
three other small boats, and I knew I would always have a boat in
my life. Part of me must be a soul mate of Ratty in The Wind in the
Willows, who said, “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing —
absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about
in boats.” In later years, though, when I was no longer broke, I would
buy used ones and fix them up rather than build from scratch.
The day finally came when our boat was done and we launched it
from the Santa Monica Pier. It was a pleasant surprise when everything
worked as it was supposed to. Giving throttle, we planed along at a re-
spectable speed of twenty knots. What a joy it was to finally experi-
ence the culmination of our months of work! I ended up using the
boat far more than Norman did. When I came into a little inheritance
money after my father's death a few years later, I took it all and bought
out Norman's share.
Actually, I give that little boat a great deal of credit for my career
in public aquariums. It provided me with the opportunity to dive in
a host of interesting places and to learn firsthand about the life in the
underwater world. The observations I was able to make of the habi-
tats and behavior of marine animals, not to mention the diving skills