                             BEST PLACE FOR A BOAT
                By Dave Barry, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist


          The reason  we  bought  a motorboat is, we needed a new kitchen.
     Our current kitchen  has  a  lot  of  problems,  such  as  a built-in
     Colonial-era  microwave that we  think  might  not  be  totally  safe
     because it can cook food  that is sitting as far as 15 feet away.  We
     had spent months striding around our current kitchen, making sweeping
     gestures and saying things like, "We'll move the sink over there!"

          What a pair of goobers.  As  you  experienced  renovators  know,
     it's easier to construct a major suspension bridge  than  to  move  a
     residential  sink.    Thousands  of homeowners who embarked on  sink-
     relocation projects  during  the  Eisenhower administration are still
     washing their dishes in the bathtub.  My wife and I kept running into
     people like this, people  with  plaster dust in their hair and hollow
     eyes from spending their wretched  nights  sleeping in the garage and
     their bleak days waiting desperately for  workmen who inevitably made
     things *worse*.  "We have no telephone  or electricity or water," the
     Renovation People would say, "and on Monday a man is supposed to come
     and take all our oxygen."

          This  was  discouraging,  but  we  really needed a new  kitchen.
     Finally we said, OK, if we don't do it now,  we're  never going to do
     it,  so  we  decided  to bite the bullet and buy a  motorboat.    Our
     reasoning  was,  "Hey,  if  we  have  a  motorboat, we'll have Family
     Outings where  we can experience Togetherness and possibly crash into
     a reef and sink, and then it won't matter about our kitchen."

          But reefs were not our immediate problem.  Our immediate problem
     was something much worse,  a  daunting  nautical  challenge  that has
     tested the courage of mariners  since ancient times, namely:  backing
     the boat into the carport.   The  trick  to  remember here is, if you
     turn your car wheels to the right  ("starboard,")  the  boat  trailer
     will  actually  go  to  the left ("port") until  your  wife  ("Beth")
     announces that you ran over a sprinkler head ("$12.95").   Using this
     procedure, I was able to get the boat into the  carport  in  no  more
     time than it took Magellan to reach Guam.

          We kept the boat moored in the carport for several weeks,  after
     which  we  decided - call us bold adventurers - to try it  on  actual
     water.    We met at the marina with our salesperson, Dale, who showed
     us how to launch the boat via a terrifying procedure wherein I had to
     back the trailer  down  a  scary  ramp  *right into the bay*.  I have
     since learned that, here  in  Miami,  on  weekends, amusement-seekers
     will come to the marina,  set  up  folding chairs, and spend a highly
     entertaining day watching boat owners perform  comical maneuvers such
     as forgetting to set their parking brakes  and having their cars roll
     down the ramp and disappear, burbling gaily, below  the  surface.  In
     the  generous nautical tradition of rendering assistance to those  in
     need,  Miami  boat  owners  sometime - this is all true  -  get  into
     gunfights over whose turn it is to use the ramp.

          Fortunately,  we had Dale with us, so we had no trouble  getting
     out  on  the  water,  where  he  taught  me the basics of seamanship.
     Here's how it went:

          DALE:  OK, you see that shoal over there?
          ME:  No.
    	  DALE:  OK, you see that marker over there?
    	  ME:  No.
    	  DALE:  Do you want to take the wheel for a while?
    	  ME:  No

          Finally, when  I was fully confident that, if necessary, I could
     take the boat out myself and get everyone killed, we returned home to
     spend a carefree evening  washing  our  hull.    You  have to do this
     because it turns out that - get ready for a fascinating nautical fact
     - *sea water is very bad  for  boats*.    I'm  serious.  Ask any boat
     owner.    Sea  water  contains  large  quantities  of  barnacles  and
     corrosion, which will rapidly turn your boat into  a  giant  piece of
     maritime crud.

          So while I was scrubbing my hull, I had  this  blinding insight:
     The  smart  thing  to do, clearly, is *never put the  boat  into  the
     water*.  I shared this insight with some other boat owners,  and they
     all  agreed  that,  definitely,  putting  your boat into the water is
     asking for  trouble.    Most  of them have had their boats sitting in
     their driveways long enough to be registered historical land- marks.  

          A group of  boat  owners  were  discussing this one evening at a
     party featuring beer, which  is  how  we  decided  to hold a Driveway
     Regatta.  Really.  I have the whole thing on videotape.  We had it on
     our driveway, and we had four boats, on trailers, secured via anchors
     in the lawn, trees, etc.  The judges awarded First Prize to a dentist
     named Olin, whose boat not only contained golf  clubs  and  a croquet
     set, but also had a spider web containing a certified spider that had
     apparently died of old age.  It was a fine  afternoon, and nobody got
     seasick,  and we even - try this at sea - had  pizza  delivered.    I
     would have cooked, but we really need a new kitchen.
