Gulf Shores is also a boatman's paradise, particularly if you like speed. You can run a speedboat flat-out on the Intracoastal Waterway because the barrier islands generally fend off the winds from the Gulf and leave the water mirror-smooth. A group of us, including my closest friend, Randall Watson, and I really got into boats. Just about every year we bought new boats with bigger motors, always going faster and faster.
I started with a sixteen-foot Checkmate and hung a 140 h.p. Mercury outboard on it. We all rerouted the fuel line on our boats and bolted an accelerator on the floor like a car's. We mounted the electric trim switches on the steering wheel, so that with a touch of we could tilt the motor to keep it parallel with the water's surface as the boat rose up on its tail. When it was opened up, the boat only had eighteen inches of its tail in the water. That made for maximum speeed and maximum danger if you were running into the wind. A sudden gust could throw you straight up into the air and knock you over. You had to hang in there on that ragged edge that all racers must straddle--the edge of total success and total disaster. I loved it.
I'll leave it to Dan and Mikey to tell us about straddling the edge of total success and total disaster. What I want to know is if they ever had Fred hang a 140 h.p. Mercury outboard on a Checkmate.
I know he has access to one.
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