KIDS AT HEART

By Capt. Bill Pike / Photography by Austin Coit

So 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. 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!

There’s nothing like going fast. Just ask Strake Adams.

“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?”

BREAKFAST WITH AN ANGLER It was beautiful, that morning. We were all seated at a picnic table on the patio of the Sea Horse Restaurant, a stone’s throw from St. Pete’s Pass-A-Grille Marina where I’d parked our Aquila overnight. There were four of us: Jesse, Strake, photographer Austin Coit and me. We’d already loaded up the boat for our jaunt with, among other things, hot dogs, mustard and buns (comprising one of Strake’s favorite entrees these days), bait (frozen shrimp, another of Strake’s favorites), PFDs, ice, drinks, a big drybag loaded with traveling supplies for toddlers (a term Strake considers altogether inappropriate), several spinning rods (fishing is yet another of Strake’s major-league enthusiasms) and an immense tackle box. Now it was eggs-and-bacon time and, more importantly, time to put the finishing touches on the plan for the day.

Strake, whose stature is commensurate with his age, was standing atop his bench seat in order to get a better view. Apparently, he found the Sea Horse clientele, an assortment of locals and Midwestern tourists, quite interesting. He was dramatically shading his eyes with the palm of his hand, sort of like Horatio Nelson or Black Bart, the pirate, might have done back in the day. “Ho, ho, ho,” he sang to himself, obviously in a cheery, expectant mood.

“You know,” advised our tall, bespectacled waitress, casting an accusatory look at both Jesse and his son, “I’ve seen children fall when they stand up on their seats like that.”

Obviously taken aback and perhaps a little embarrassed, Jesse politely apologized and, a little grudgingly, suggested Strake adopt a more conventional approach to picnic-table seating. No sense making waves, Jesse seemed to be thinking, no sense tossing a wrench into our little adventure right off the bat. Strake took his dad’s advice, but did so a little grudgingly as well.

Then, as the waitress began taking our orders, writing everything down on a notepad, she aimed another accusatory look at the arrangement of Strake’s silverware. “You know,” she advised again, “that knife is awfully close to that child—he could hurt himself or others.”

“It’s a butter knife,” Jesse fired back, his eyes widening. “The kid knows how to use a butter knife.”

Strake’s eyes widened, too. Then he carefully watched the waitress depart in a huff after she’d snapped her notepad shut. You had to wonder what the little fellow was thinking.

In a half hour or so, as the scrambled eggs came out, Strake discovered he’d forgotten to order the most genuine of all Florida beverages. “Can I please have some orange juice, ma’am?” he asked.

“Oh,” the lady replied, gazing down imperiously at him over her glasses, “you’re such a sweet little boy.”

The sugary nature of this possibly insincere statement was way too much to bear, at least for Strake. With his baseball cap slightly askew, he looked up at the waitress, stared straight into her eyes and announced defiantly, “I am not a sweet little boy … I’m a fisherman!”

The table erupted in laughter. The lad was one of us, no doubt about it. Three adults and a three-year-old, all of us kids at heart. Strake sealed the deal when I posed a rather boring, grownup sort of question after the hilarity had died down. “Hey man, what’s the first thing you wanna do when we get back to the boat?”

“Poop my pants,” he immediately yelled, with an ear-to-ear grin. Then he began laughing at his own joke.

STANDING UNDER THE PALMS Strake’s plan for the day seemed altogether reasonable. We’d go back to the marina, gas up and run (at full speed wherever possible) out to Egmont Key, a lovely, palm-shady island accessible from mainland Florida by boat only. Then, we’d zoom around Egmont, find a likely spot, ease the Aquila up on one of the long sandy beaches, get off the boat, wander around and, if there was time, check out the remains of old Fort Dade or the lighthouse farther north.

Then finally, before heading back to Pass-A-Grille (again, at full speed wherever possible) we’d back away, anchor off and indulge in a little fishing (with Strake’s prized frozen shrimp), a little swimming and a little hot dogging via the Kenyon electric grill in the Aquila’s port console. “Well, Strake,” I said as the two of us surveyed an inviting stretch of white sand beyond the bow. “Are you ready to beachify?”

The little guy had had a great, hair-flying-in-the-wind ride out to the island—he’d obviously loved it. Then we’d done a spirited circumnavigation. And now, with both throttles at dead idle and the Mercs trimmed up, we were easing into the plan’s next phase.

But hey, King Neptune had other ideas. Not long after I’d nosed the Aquila ashore and we’d all disembarked, a wild-andcrazy guy in a big express cruiser rumbled past, pulling a giant wake. And the oomph of the wake promptly elbowed the Aquila’s stern slightly sideways, leaving her almost broadside to a lowly, yet powerful incoming swell.

This was not good, of course. And we collectively reacted with the speed of a seasoned infantry platoon under attack. Per his father’s instructions, Strake stood his ground, under some palm trees, in his signature-red sunglasses, with his arms folded across his chest, silently, stoically keeping tabs. The rest of us descended upon the Aquila’s port quarter and began pushing.

“Hey look,” said Jesse after a couple of minutes. “There’s a guy out there waving at us.”

I stepped back to look. Indeed, just a short distance offshore, there was a guy waving from the helm of a Grady-White runabout. About the time I spotted him, he yelled, “Need a little help? I just saw what happened.”

Some jam-packed minutes ensued. Jesse swiftly converted all the mooring lines on board into a long towline and swam it out to the Grady. In the meantime, Austin kept pushing while I climbed

aboard. Then, as the Grady brought us perpendicular to the beach, I lowered the Mercs, cranked ‘em and backed free. As I did this, I shot a glance in Strake’s direction—he was still standing there under the palms, all by himself, quietly, calmly watching, with his arms still folded.

“Man oh man,” I remember thinking, “most other three-yearolds would be freaking out right about now, yowling at the top of their lungs. But nope, not the Strakeman. He’s one calm, cool, collected customer.”

AN AFTERNOON WITH HUCK FINN Once we’d anchored the Aquila well offshore in the sandy depths that surround Egmont Key, Austin and I swam a few odds and sods back aboard from the beach while Jesse did the same with Strake and Strake’s Shakespeare Ugly Stik GX2 spinning rod. Then, because it was well past noon and we were all radically famished, I tossed a bunch of hot dogs on the Kenyon and got the buns and mustard out of the fridge.

Strake made a poignant plea from the swim platform as I began herding the dogs back and forth with my trusty pocket knife. He was standing next to his dad, waving the Ugly Stik. Thanks to the semi-submersible nature of the platform, he was knee-deep in the aquamarine waters while his dad’s shins were barely awash. Strake, I noticed, handled the Stik with flair, although it seemed he was more into casting than actually catching at this stage of the game.

We did nothing productive—absolutely zilch—for the rest of the afternoon. We swam, fished and talked. And, despite his age and the fact that he’d totally blown past his afternoon nap, Strake lost his composure only one time. While sitting on the swim platform, controlling his spinning rod with one hand and downloading a hot dog with the other, he inadvertently knocked his plastic bag full of shrimp into the drink.

“My bait, my bait,” he wailed, pointing at the bag as the tide carried it off toward Tampico. “My bait, my bait.”

Sploosh!

“Here you go, buddy,” Jesse said, offering up the bag after diving in to make a quick save.

“Thanks, dad,” replied Strake. “Thanks a lot.”

The run back to the marina was much like the run we’d enjoyed en route to the island that morning, except for one thing. While we zoomed along, maintaining a top hop of 32 knots per Strake’s wishes, I noticed that he’d fallen asleep, despite the fact that he was kneeling backwards on his half of the helm seat so he could watch our wake—all green, white and blue—swooping into the red, tropical sunset.

It was early evening when we finally arrived at Pass-A-Grille. Jesse packed up his pickup truck—he and his son had a long drive back to Ft. Lauderdale ahead of them. And the last thing he carried ashore was Strake, sound asleep again, over his shoulder like a military duffel bag. As we shook hands and said so long, Strake perked up.

“I don’t wanna go home,” he said. “I wanna stay here with Capt. Bill and the boat.”

Certainly, it took us a while to get Strake to see why staying wasn’t an option. But that was cool. After all, he’d bailed me out of a big-time jam and, in doing so, had helped confirm something I’d only half suspected. Yup, a boat-lovin’ kid had indeed jumped at the chance to customize and enjoy his own cruise. And now the results were in. Not only had he had a ball, but I did too.

At day’s end, on the trip back to St. Pete, Strake fell sound asleep despite his rather awkward position.