Our so-called “bateau” boat is not yet five minutes away from the dock before we spot our first gator. It isn’t very big–maybe four or five feet. I glimpse the crest of its head and the black, reptilian eyes glaring at me above the brown water. Then there’s the flash of a tail, and it is gone. I remember what “Mr. John” Benoit said after the fog had lifted this morning and J.B. Castagnos had launched our 20' cypress-planked bateau at Mr. John’s camp on Bayou Pidgeon.
TAKATANI, a 19′ yawl built to Iain Oughtred’s Eu Na Mara design, sails in a light breeze before the ruins of Urquhart Castle while transiting the Caledonia Canal in Scotland.
In the July 1904 issue of The Rudder magazine, there’s an amusing firsthand account by L.A. Dixon of the optimistic purchase of a very early gasoline-powered auto-boat somewhere on the coast of Maine.