The Gloria Jean

[FlatsNBay]

Growing up in Florida, I've been around boats my entire life. My first boat was a 10' Sears jonboat with a 3 HP Johnson outboard. That was until my buddy found us a "real boat".

My buddy found an elderly neighbor who's husband passed away and she had an old boat sitting in her back yard. It wasn't just any old boat, it had giant red letters on the port and starboard side of the bow that read "Gloria Jean". She was a beauty, 16' long with a console and 50 HP Evinrude. For $200 we were in business!

There was only one problem, neither of us were old enough to drive and our parents weren't the outdoor type so we had no trailer hitch.

My buddy came up with an ingenious idea. We put the tongue of the trailer on a little red wagon and we pushed the boat down the street a quarter mile to a city park at the waters edge of a big saltwater canal system in south Florida. Boy the looks we got from passing motorists!

Once at the park, we pushed the boat as far as we could before the bank began to decline into the water. My buddy then disconnected the winch cable from the boat, then fastened the bow of the boat securely to the trailer with a heavy rope. Next we fastened the winch cable to a nearby tree and slowly lowered the boat into the water by back reeling the winch cable while pushing the boat into the water. Ingenious!

When we returned, we just did the reverse process and we winched the trailer up the embankment until we were on level ground.

The Gloria Jean opened us up to a world of snook and tarpon fishing in the canals of South Florida. Oh, the memories!

[Capt. BassinLou]

Cool story, thank you for sharing Flat's

[Oldfart9999]

What ever it takes, a buddy and I used to ride our bikes from Auburn to Skaneateles Lake to fish, sometines the shorter trip to Owasco Lake.
Rodney

[Mike Cork]

Great read! The lengths and struggles we would go through as young men to go fishing...      lost on todays youth...

[Donald Garner]

Flats, that was a cool story there       Tks for sharing it with us  

[Smallie_Stalker]

Wow, what a great story! I don't know how I missed this one but it was a great read.

Thanks for sharing it with us Steve.

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