A year before when my grandfather had met up with us at lake Powell
he had brought along a homemade dingy that was so very beautiful to a
boy of ten. When My friends and I decided to make our own boat I was
mentally modeling it on my grandfathers boat. He had the advantage of
being able to afford all new material specifically for the project he
was working on while we were more scavengers picking over the
carcasses of old construction projects. So I started our looking for
pieces of marine plywood but ended up with some old 2 x 12's. Close
enough. We cut and shaped the pieces into a reasonable replica of
the shape and size of my grandpa's proto type but there were a lot
more gaps in the boards than I liked. I was not really sure about
sealing technology but I knew tar sealed leaks, so roofing tar it
was. After we had a tar soaked and pained boat it was not as
magnificent and much more messy than I would have liked but I hit
upon a brilliant plan. Why not take a piece of Plexiglas from a sign
my dad had in the shop and cut a hole right in the bottom of our boat
and make it a glass bottom boat. We destroyed the bottom of our boat
to put in a window, a feature not found on very many boats at all
because it is really quite difficult to design in such a way that it
is safe and strong and keeps the water under, as opposed to in, the
boat. We laughed and joked about all of the cool things we could see
through our glass bottomed boat, we could see fist bite our bait, we
could shine a light down the window and attract fish by the millions.
It was going to be awesome. We screwed it to the bottom of the boat
and slopped a little more tar around it and then tried to move it.
While we were confident it would be quite agile in the water it had
by application of heavy lumber and plenty of tar become quite heavy
and unwieldy on land. We decided the best way to get it to our
favorite pond which was in the next town would be to build a trailer
for it so we could pull it on our bikes. The trailer we constructed
to hold the boat was made of 2 x 4” and bike tire and weighed about
as much as the boat. We loaded the boat on with a few paddles and our
fishing gear and I hooked it up to my bike and tried to peddle it. No
dice. We did discover though that if a few guys push started it I
could keep it going and the pond we were going to was mostly down
hill from Santaquin, so we set off.
