Leisure | Aquila
KIDS AT HEART There’s nothing quite like putting a three-year-old in charge of a day on the water. By Capt. Bill Pike / Photography by Austin Coit
S
o here was the deal. The folks at MarineMax in St. Petersburg, Florida wanted to loan me their latest and greatest—an Aquila 32 Sport Power Catamaran—for a few days of cruising. But, due to scheduling difficulties, I couldn’t dig up a soul to go with me. My wife BJ, who had initially planned to take time off from work, was occupied with an unanticipated staff shortage. My neighbor Mike was occupied with local politics. And all of my colleagues were occupied with projects of their own. So, was I gonna have to go cruising all by my little ol’ self? Then one fine morning, during breakfast, I got to thinkin’ about how, when I was a kid, I’d have no trouble skipping my morning bowl of Sugar Crisp if there was a boat ride in the offing.
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So, shoot! Apparently all the adults in my life had forsaken me. What about a boat-lovin’ kid? I dialed up Jesse Adams, a Ft. Lauderdale boat fanatic, ex-Navy vet and longtime buddy whose dad, Tommy Adams, used to build and race super-fast offshore screamers in the bad old days, right alongside Don Aronow, the famous powerboat maven. Jesse had a three-year old son, a boaty little soul he’d named Strake, after one of the subtler, performance-boosting aspects on a high-performance planing vessel. Strake Adams? What a handle! “Hey Jesse,” I said, “how would you and Strake like to go for a boat ride? You could drive up early and we’d spend the whole day cruising around St. Pete, pretty much doing whatever Strake wants to do. He’d be The Man for a day. Whataya think?”
