By Vincent Bini
People are funny. As a species, I mean. What’s completely acceptable to one person is borderline criminal to another.
Which makes spending hours with someone on about 120 square feet of fiberglass—floating in the middle of nowhere—a little risky.
On land, if someone gets on your nerves, you can walk away. On a 17-foot boat? Not so much. And I’m fairly certain there are legal ramifications to solving that problem the other way.
Over the years I’ve had all kinds of guests onboard—friends, customers, people who came highly recommended by people who clearly didn’t know them very well. I’ve gotten much better at screening. What follows is a partial explanation of why that became necessary.
The strangest guests I’ve ever had weren’t bad people. That’s the thing. They weren’t jerks. It was just the choices they made once the dock lines were untied.
The Booze Cruise
The first memorable one started with a call the night before. A friend from work—really into fishing, never been to the Glades—asked if she could bring a couple of friends.
“Absolutely,” I said. “Just have them bring whatever they want to eat or drink. I’ll have water and ice.”
I was sitting in my truck the next morning going over the game plan when a car pulled up. The doors flew open and out poured chaos—loud, disheveled, either still drunk or getting a head start on the day. Probably both.
I knew immediately this was going to be something.
I loaded their gear into the boat: food, bags, and a full case of Michelob Ultra.
Yikes.
We launched just before seven and hadn’t made it halfway across the basin when I heard the unmistakable crack of a beer can opening. I was doomed. I’ve run with rowdy crowds before, but I’d been out of that scene for a while. This felt like a floating sorority party. As we bounced from spot to spot the beer count dropped and the volume climbed. I’ll be honest—it was funny. The fishing was debatable. Line tangles, tree casts, general mayhem. But they were having the time of their lives, and it was hard not to get pulled into it.
Eventually, biology called.
I offered to take them to a chickee with a port-a-potty. They declined. Instead, I pulled up to an exposed oyster bar, they asked for napkins, hopped out, and announced, “Turn around.”
The sounds that followed were unforgettable.
Naturally, I yelled, “Watch out for the gator that lives here!”
I laughed. They did not.
We fished a little longer and headed in. They had a great time—caught some fish and one hell of a buzz. From that day on I became very particular about how much alcohol makes it onto my boat. Not a prohibition, just an awareness. There’s a difference between loose and useless, and I’d seen both ends of that spectrum before noon.
Which brings me to the next one.
The Ninja
This guest was subtler. At first.
We were in the Lower Keys, headed out for bonefish. Mid-spring, cooler water, but worth the shot. I put him on a flat with real potential and climbed onto the poling platform. He settled onto the bow to stay ready.
Except he wasn’t staying ready. He was lying down. Sunning himself like a tourist on a cruise ship. Or a sea lion.
I told him to stay alert. He assured me he could move fast when it counted.
I doubted that immediately.
Five minutes later I picked up movement along the shoreline—big shapes sliding in shallow water. I thought bonefish at first, but as we closed the distance, I realized it was a school of large snook, laid up and warming in the sun. Perfect setup. The kind of thing you remember for years.
“Grab your rod,” I said quietly. “Big snook. Right here.”
He scrambled up, grabbed the rod—and fumbled it. In trying to save it he launched the whole setup into the water. The instant it hit, the entire school detonated—one giant mud cloud and then nothing. Gone.
I said something I probably shouldn’t repeat.
The water was shallow enough that I recovered the rod, but the reel had to be completely torn down and rebuilt later. We fished a little longer. Nothing else happened worth mentioning. That was his last trip on my boat.
Here’s what I’ve figured out after years of this: people don’t act strangely on boats because they’re strange people. Boats just remove the exits. Whatever someone actually is—patient or frantic, present or checked out, the kind of person who lies down when they should be standing up—that’s exactly who shows up the moment you shove off from the dock. There’s nowhere to hide and no version of yourself to perform. The water has a way of finding out.
I think about that sometimes when I’m out there alone. Wondering what it finds in me.
Probably a guy who still yells about gators that may or may not exist.
And laughs every single time.
