The Tampontoon

We bought a boat two summers ago. It's a small pontoon boat and its a beater. It seemed like the right idea since no one in our family had owned a boat, put one in the water or pulled a trailer. The boat is named Tampontoon.

We did not name it. The previous owner did. The name was obscured when we bough it and we did not even notice it for a week or so. We decided to let the name stand since everyone knows renaming a boat is the worst kind of bad luck. Ask John Silver.

In any case, we bought it. I have to give my wife some credit here. I had wanted a boat for a long time. But, there is always something. Where will we store it. Can we afford it? Who knows how to launch/recover/drive/maintain the thing? When I told her I thought we should buy it she said go for it.

We go to Florida every summer for some weeks thanks to the immense generosity of an uncle of mine who shall remain nameless for the time being. When we got down there the summer of 22 this particular boat that I had been watching on Craigslist was still available. I called the guy and we went to see it. The seller and his family seemed like nice folks and the boat was pretty much as described in the add. There were a few things about this boat that made it stand out to me among the ones I had seen. The first thing was it had a beefy aluminum transom vs some of the boats I had seen with wooden(!) transoms. The second was the fact that it had a relatively new 2011 Suzuki 90hp engine. Four stroke, fuel injected goodness! By the way its a 1997 Monark eighteen footer.

The boat is a beater like I said. So, what makes a pontoon boat a beater? Well, it was missing most of the deck furniture due to its owner being in a wheel chair thanks to a diving incident on a previous boat he had owned. The carpet on the deck was pretty much rotted. The furniture that is present was not in good shape. The console was wobbly and pretty ugly as well. It looks like a boat that has been outdoors for twenty plus years. The pontoons are a little scraped up and stained from sea water. The gas tank was a throw away. The prop was rough looking and it turned out to be slightly bent. We found out it was sightly bent after we bent it severely and replaced it. That is a story for another installment of the Tampontoon Tales.

In any case, we bought it and my boys and I took it to a deserted boat ramp I knew about from my kayaking trips in the area. We wanted a dead boat ramp because of mad scenes I had witnessed at boat ramps in the past. For some reason, some people go insane at ramps and get hyper agro. In any case, we took it down to this dead ramp and managed to get the boat off the trailer and into the water. We took an hour long spin in the thing and then were able to get it baclk on the trailer. We stayed pretty near the ramp just in case we had any issues. We did not.

After that we were out in the boat almost every day for three weeks. It never skipped a beat. Except for the time we ran out of gas. Operator error.

They say the best days of owning a boat are the day you buy it and the day you sell it. I will say that for me, owning a boat has made me realize I would like another one. The Tampontoon is a good boat for learning and cruising and letting the kids take it out. Its been a great learning experience. It has its shortcomings. I have heard its a terrible idea to take a pontoon boat into the open ocean. It has a pretty shallow draft, but it still draws close to 2 feet. I like to fish the flats for reds, etc. Where we go, that keeps us out of a lot of places where the fish are.

In any case, we are learning a lot. Figuring it out as we go.