JUNE 12, 2025 – (Cont.) I never attended to the naming of the Bayliner—officially or unofficially. It was simply called the “power boat” to distinguish it from the Capri sailboat, as well as from the other watercraft in our growing fleet consisting of a paddleboat, two aluminum canoes and two kayaks[1]. The Bayliner served us well as both a ski boat and a cruiser. Once you got yourself into the boat, the spacious comfortable seats made for an enjoyable ride. Once you got the boat out of its starting position and planing over the water, it could cross the lake in no time flat, often at the expense of a passenger’s hat, which was the main point of having a fishing net on board at all times.
It didn’t take long before our sons wanted to drive the power boat. I cautiously acquiesced. Byron, who enjoyed spending time at the cabin and often invited friends, became an excellent pilot. He learned where to go safely and what areas of the lake to avoid. Inevitably I reached the point where I was comfortable allowing him to take the boat out without me as a lookout or even as a “tourist” passenger.
I remember one occasion when he and his friend Kumar took the boat on a long fishing outing. They tried a number of spots, where they’d anchor for 20 minutes or so before moving to another part of the lake. I kept tabs via binoculars, and when a slight breeze rose, I took the sailboat out and sailed to wherever they were, where I’d procure a first-hand, close-up fishing report.
Toward the end of their extended fishing expedition, I noticed that they’d anchored the boat just beyond the rock bar 150 feet out or so from the Björnholm shoreline. I noticed, however that they were no longer in the boat but swimming slowly in its general vicinity. I sailed over to see what was up.
“Did you give up on fishing?” I asked.
“No, Dad,” said Byron. “What we figured out is that if we scout things out first, we’ll have much better luck catching something. So what we do is jump in the water to have a look. If we see a lot of fish around, we know it’s a good spot to fish. If we don’t see any fish, we move on.”
“Sounds like a good plan,” I said. “Has your method produced any tangible results?”
“Nope . . . not yet.”
As an historical fact, I believe the only fish that Byron caught out of Grindstone Lake was not from the Bayliner with the 115-horse motor but from our little paddle boat; and not in obscure waters between the islands and known only to fulltime fisher people but in waters just offshore from Björnholm. When Byron returned to shore with his two trophy-like smallmouth bass, Beth took his picture. He was bare-chested, wearing a baseball cap, grinning proudly, and wearing oversized work gloves, grasping each fish by the tail and holding them up with his outstretched arms. He cut the perfect image of a manly cabin kid who happens to have his third degree black belt in Taekwondo. The signature photo still rests on a bookshelf along the walkway upstairs in the cabin.
When Byron’s oldest cousin, Hillary, saw the picture, however, she asked, “What’s with the gloves?” to which Beth replied, “He doesn’t like touching slimy fish with his bare hands.” Moral of that fish story: don’t judge the toughness of a Taekwondo champion by the shirt he’s not wearing in a fishing photo.
But back to the Bayliner . . .
It presented two problems, neither of which was on the water; both of which involved the off-season. First was storage. To avoid the cost of winter storage, we parked the boat on our property. Unless a boat is shrink-wrapped, however, critters in the form of MICE manage to find ample cover . . . under the cover. Further, if adequate contraptions aren’t placed correctly under the cover, rain and snowmelt form large heavy reservoirs, pushing down on the cover and in the worst case, spill over the edges and into the boat itself. By the following cabin season, the boat is a veritable mess inside, and with ample remorse the owner is recalling the adage, “The second happiest day in a boat owner’s life is the day s/he buys a boat . . .”
The second problem created by the Bayliner was a two-part challenge split between spring and fall: dragging the enormously heavy boat lift in and out of the lake. Again, to save the cost of paying someone else to do it, I tackled both ends of the problem myself. The clunky aluminum frame on four sturdy pillars reminded me of a deep sea oil rig.
Being somewhat of a physical lightweight, I relied on engineering techniques to wrestle the lift in and out of the water. To aid my efforts I purchased giant plastic wheels and fitted each onto a four-foot-long 2-1/2” pipe and stuck each pipe into the two-foot-long hollow at each corner of the lift. Theoretically, this all sounds well and good. In practical terms, it was a bust after about five feet of progress, given that at that point, one, two, three or all four pipes would slip out of the lift. More sophisticated engineering devices on the market could be procured but at considerable expense. To compensate for the less than satisfactory wheels, I resorted to use of the lever—an eight-foot-long 4 x 4 treated post—and a fulcrum consisting of a cement block. I also brought a collection of long pipes and other 4 x 4s into play for sliding the damn lift down off the berm and into the water. In the fall, I used logging chains and a block-and-tackle (a form of leverage) hooked to nearby sturdy trees and cranked the lift up along said pipes and 4 x 4s. I’m grateful that no chain or cable ever snapped, though I always positioned myself to the side in case of a catastrophic failure of some sort. I didn’t want to be decapitated by a flying cable hook or crushed by an “oil rig” posing as a boat lift.
Between the boat storage issue and the lift business, I was more than ready to sell both the boat and the lift when Byron, the main skipper of the Bayliner, went off to France for a three-year stint at his employer’s mother ship, Société Générale. I’m not sure that the day a guy slapped cash in my hand and hauled the boat away was the happiest day of my life, but I was pretty darned happy about not having to deal with the boat and lift again each spring and fall. (Cont.)
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© 2025 by Eric Nilsson
[1]The Ouchita was sold (good riddance) to a guy who wasn’t interested in the trailer or the Mariner outboard. He slipped me 200 bucks, loaded the boat (along with an old wood-burning stove he also purchased from us) onto a flatbed trailer behind his rusted-out pickup and bade us farewell.
