By Vincent Bini
Everyone had a noble steed that carried them to battle. Whether metaphorical or actual is completely dependent on what millennia you hail from. I had many noble steeds growing up.
A few notable ones would be my Powell Peralta Mike McGill skateboard. It got me around town and onto some of the sweetest ramps around. Never did find that Animal Chin. When not scooting around town on my board, you’d find me on my GT Mach One BMX bike. I loved that thing. All chromed out and clean. It was the epitome of BMX bikes. That carried me much farther than my previous modes of transportation and allowed me to pull off some of the raddest tricks. Girls loved it. At least they did in the movies. Who wouldn’t want to woo Lori Loughlin?
As I got a little older and started getting into fishing more, my sights changed, and my steed needed to adapt to the water.
Enter the Reef Rebel.
Unto the Sea
A 1972-ish, 17-foot Mako knockoff with a 115 Evinrude or Johnson—the brand dependent on which cowling we happened to have when we inevitably destroyed them. It was a center console open fisherman. It was my buddy’s boat—well, his dad’s—but I took complete ownership of it and treated it like it was mine.
From my first trip to the Keys to the first time I laid eyes on the Everglades, the Reef Rebel got us there. Most of the time.
Cutting my teeth in flats fishing was only possible because of that boat. Running the flats of the Keys became a reality after studying charts and watching countless hours of “Walker’s Cay Chronicles” and anything else that had to do with fishing down there.
We were doing it.
It was ugly and sometimes downright dangerous. A safety-fourth-or-fifth hat should have been donned. Especially the day we nearly pulled a Dukes of Hazzard.
We were running blindly through the backcountry of the Everglades. A storm was bearing down on us, and we needed shelter. Fast. I knew we were close to a creek we could tuck into, but I wasn’t sure exactly where to turn. As we raced through the mangroves, I saw what I thought was my turn.
It wasn’t.
But I made it anyway.
Big mistake.
There was a large oyster bar sitting right in the middle of the narrow creek. If I hit it, we would have surely gone airborne. I managed to swing wide at the last second. The skeg hit, but we made it.
Barely.
Running Hard
As we evolved, we transformed the Reef Rebel into a true flats machine—well, for us at least. The boat weighed a ton as it was, but we turned that open fisherman into a skiff. Built a front deck complete with hatches, one big enough to store a cooler—our fancy Igloo. Slapped some carpet on that bad boy and it was ready for action.
I even convinced a buddy in welding school to build me a poling platform. Made it a lot easier than standing on the engine cowling.
That’s how they broke.
We were set.
My buddy and I pushed the limits of that boat—and ourselves. This all happened before GPS, so it truly was an incredible feat. In between our near-fatal mishaps, we managed to put fish on the deck that a lot of guides struggled to find in those same conditions.
Our heads must have looked like hot air balloons on the days we came back to the dock loaded up while the guides had nothing.
But like clockwork, the sea has a way of humbling you. One day you’re filling hooks. The next, you’re limping back to the dock with a gaff tied to your outboard as a makeshift tiller because the steering gave out.
The Reef Rebel was our escape pod—our time machine of sorts. Aside from cell phones not being a thing, we were free. Not a care in the world. Just us versus nature.
It was the Swiss Army knife of boats—ski boat, flats boat, offshore boat, duck boat, and more than a few times, a stunt boat. For a brief moment, it was almost a reef.
Thankfully, we salvaged it. Lost some blood and almost a toe, but it was worth it.
That boat was the glue in my friendship with my buddy. What brought us together bonded us like brothers. We took on the unknown together and figured it out. All through high school, we carved out our place in the fishing world. Then life showed up.
Graduation came, and our time on the water started slipping away. College. Careers. All of it eats your time if you let it. My buddy went off to school, and I was getting into the fire service. My time on the water hit an all-time low.
I took his dad out a few times in his absence, but that faded too.
Eventually, the boat just sat in the garage, and his dad made the hard call to sell it. I hated hearing it, but what could you do?
Legend of the Reef Rebel
As the years went by, my friend and I drifted the way people do. Weeks between talking turned into months, then years. We still talk—just not enough.
But it doesn’t take much. You can’t go through what we did together and not be able to pick it right back up.
I got a call from him a while back, and he had a story. Apparently, his dad received a call from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. They told him they had found his boat. Perplexed, his dad told them he didn’t own a boat. Turns out, the guy he sold it to all those years ago never registered it.
The Coast Guard found it floating about 40 miles offshore.
I thought about all the miles we put on that boat. All the bad decisions, near misses, and perfect days we thought would last forever.
Funny how none of that actually does. Boats get sold. People move on. Life fills in the gaps whether you want it to or not.
But for a little stretch of time, we had something figured out. Or at least we believed we did. And maybe that’s the whole point.
The Reef Rebel was still out there. Doing what it was built to do.
With or without us.
