When I was making those ugly early morning drives into Tyson's Corner from Reston, I used to dream about the possibility of getting a boat and giving up on cars.
Well I haven't been able to give up on cars, but living on North Carolina's Crystal Coast has allowed me to add a boat to my means of transportation.
I don't come from a boating family, so I have taken it slow since we moved to the North Carolina coast last fall.
Last fall I took a boating course, and I have been out a number of times with a guide in a similar boat.
Recently we got our new Sundance skiff, and it was really neat to take the boat down to Swansboro yesterday. The day before I had spent some time with a boating instructor learning how to drive the boat and how to read the channel markers.
Fortunately boating does not operate under Northern Virginia rules which I believe state that if you have to read the signs, you probably should not be where you are. I think the overriding rule is that any form of hesitation indicates that you are an idiot and should go back to where you came from quickly since everything is supposed to happen at full blast speed even on the parts of Wiehle which are a little curvy.
My first ocean trip had some pretty empty "highways" even when we got down to the Intracoastal Waterway. The road signs or markers were a little hard to find the first time, but yesterday when I made the trip a second time, I did much better.
It was neat going to town in a boat, I think the challenges are much less than they are on the Toll Road.
The speeds are slower and the biggest danger is getting stuck on a sand bar and having to call Sea Tow which is the AAA of the water. That's a whole lot better than being stuck on the side of one of Northern Virginia's highways where it is dangerous even to stay in your car.
My comment to any aspiring boaters who are dreaming in the traffic, if I can figure out the boating world, anyone can. I even backed the trailer successfully onto the boat launch ramp with a minimum of difficulty.
Of course some folks in Northern Virginia might need a bigger boat than mine. There are plenty of those big boats around, you just need a bigger paycheck to go along with it.
