Houseboat Lessons Learned

Debrief and After-Action Report
Dale Hollow Lake (KY/TN)
14 to 17 May 2009

• If you pack more than two tee-shirts for a four-day excursion, you’re probably overplanning.

• While we all love wheat bread, rye bread, Wonder Bread, pumpernickel, french bread, Kaiser rolls, sub rolls, hamburger buns, hot dog buns, and bagels – bringing 15 cubic feet of bread is just overkill.

• A head-nod to “diversity” on the houseboat can be accomplished by having at least one Prius-driving vegetarian on board.

• Late arrivals will suck hind teat on rack selection. A related lesson is that anyone who says “comfortable foldout bed” is already a liar.

• Adult beverages should be clear in nature. Drinking bourbon on a houseboat in May is akin to wearing white shoes after Labor Day.

• Although the idiom refers to “pissing and moaning,” when waking up on morning #1, these sounds will actually be heard in the opposite order.

• At the beginning of day #2, you can count on some member of your crew to give a conspiratorial look left then right, then lower his voice and declare with authority, “Today is vodka day.”

• Leave the muesli and scones at home; houseboat with the boys is one of your few opportunities for a "cowboy breakfast": bacon and coffee, straight up.

• What appears at first to be two men engaged in prayer may in fact be two men who are slumped over, on the verge of falling from their chairs.

• Marine sanitation systems can be finicky, and thus the limitation of “4 to 5 squares per flush” is the rule, regardless of whether you think it unfair.

• Bringing along an 18-foot Bayliner is handy for fishing, skiing, or as the target of an ad hoc search-and-rescue (SAR) operation.

• Those three guys in that speedboat – the muscled-up one with the spider-web prison tats, the gap-tooth bug-eyed pederast-looking one, and the third suggesting a young tweaked-out Gary Busey -- may be from the road cast of “Deliverance.” Or they may be just some good-ole boys willing to run you out on the water after legal sunset to help find your lost crewmates.

• Acknowledging that the Coen brothers are master filmmakers, repeat viewings of any single movie will be considered a houseboat party foul. Violators will have their movie-selection privileges revoked for a period of time determined by a board of judges. A related lesson: movie viewing lists should represent "directorial diversity": Scorsese, Eastwood, Cameron, Besson, Kubrick, Mann, or Tarantino. Metrosexuals may select one Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

• You know you have the right mix when everyone onboard knows all the good lines in “The Outlaw Josey Wales.”

• Grown men may require the quiet reminder “gentlemen…?” should they begin hooting at the sight of a bikini on a passing bass boat.

• Just because it’s under the floor mat doesn’t mean it’s invisible. (Note that this is a general-purpose lesson learned, and is not specific to this particular excursion.)

• Experienced marina employees can execute a high-speed boarding of your vessel with agility that would make a Navy SEAL proud.

• If your 83’ houseboat (valued at $400,000) is on a collision course with another houseboat ($300,000), the marina’s wooden dock ($25,000), and a 22’ Donzi ($40,000), it is better to have “Bryant the marina pilot” at the wheel.

• One pair of skivvies should be sufficient for a four-day boat trip. If you are a passenger in another man’s vehicle, a backup pair for the ride home is just plain courtesy.

• Although not yet listed in the DSM-IV, the disorder PVAD (Post-Vacation Apathy Disorder) is real, regardless of what Tom Cruise says.

• Planning for future boat trips should be delayed long enough so that wives will not bolt upright and indignant: “Didn’t you just GO on one of those?”