This boat was purchased in July 1970 and was an 18-foot, tri hull, with 2, 60-horse motors and it had 2 internal 24-gallon gas tanks. Loaded out, with full tanks it would cruise at 25, had an over 50-mile range and topped out at over 30. It was a nice one for our growing family, would comfortably fish 4 and gas at the time was only 25 cents a gallon! Fishing the boat a lot during the first summer, one memorable trip was when we loaded it up with big speckled trout see my post “[He’ll Have To Wait]” of June 9, 2011.
Moving to Arizona in January of 1971, the large computer company moved the boat and all of our gear out there and as summer drew near my friends asked me if I was going to take it down to Rocky Point to try out the fishing. My answer was a deafening “Yes!” The first trip down we fished and caught fish, nothing special except the fish were a different brand, not specs and reds we usually caught, but sea bass, grouper and cabrilla. In 1973 I even won a category of a tournament with a 10-pound queen trigger fish and another time we even cruised up to within 5 yards of a 50-foot whale!
The first time out, while returning to the camp, I called the proprietor as instructed before we left. In broken English, he replied, “Beeg, wide Texas boat?” and the name stuck. On future trips everyone called it the “Beeg Wide Texas Boat”!
This boat was a fishing boat, but while in Arizona, my friends and customers, real threatening like, made me take them water skiing,. The lake of choice was Lake Pleasant, not 20 miles up I-17 from Phoenix now the town has encircled it see my post of May 25, 2012, “[White Bass In The Desert]”. Most summer days were calm and many afternoons were spent at the lake, the boat was a delight to ski out of and the motors would jerk you right out of the water, even on one ski!
Then came the move to Atlanta, a promotion for me, but as they say, “I left claw marks on the floor when they drug me out!” The boat, all 18 feet of it, was just too big to economically trailer down to Destin or Suwanne and definitely too big to trailer all the way to the Texas coast, gas, with Nixon’s embargo, was now 50 cents per gallon. So, as with all things, this ended too and after 4 years, on a trip back to Houston, I sold the boat to a man in Bellville and never saw it again.