What I Don't Know About Boats

... and how that helps me write a good story.

There are people in my life who will laugh out loud at this next sentence: Lori Knowles knows a lot about boats.

It’s true, I really do.

(Nancy, Marty, Krista, Peter, Emmett, Gracie—all of Whiskey Bay and half of Lake of Bays—stop laughing.)

I’m serious! I know a ton about boats. I do. My editor says so.

Just last week while editing my manuscript, Ellie-my-editor said: “Lori, I’m learning so much about boats!” As an editor myself, I know we never exaggerate. And so I’m telling you: I know a lot about boats. And you will too once you read Summers with Miss Elizabeth (coming soon).

In this novel you’ll read about many different types: Whalers and runabouts, canoes and Dippies, a yacht, a steamship, an Albacore, a Sidewinder ski boat, a Shark, a Sunfish, a Laser, a Hobie, a Donzi. Oh, and a great big glossy launch—like a Greavette or a Ditchburn—that’s driven solely by Miss Elizabeth. The plot, in fact, hinges around a boating incident.

The irony here is that I’m not really a boat person.

I’m neither skilled nor intelligent when it comes to the operation of watercraft. I passed my boater’s licence by cribbing off my nine-year-old. Sailboats dump the second I step into them. Outboard motors inexplicably gasp, splutter, die, and float up to motor heaven in my presence. Once, on a windy, wavy day while my two tiny children and their cousin waited on the other side of the lake to be retrieved from sailing lessons, I untied my little Whaler, hopped in, and was swept speedily down the bay while madly searching for the boat key.

It was not in the ignition.

“WHERE’S THE BOAT KEY?” I screamed into my cell at my husband, who was 50k away in the Produce section at Costco.

Needless to say, he could not help me.

I had to swim back to the dock dragging the boat behind me, the rope in my teeth. By the time I picked up my kids it was hours later. They were alone on the edge of the sailing club dock, weeping and wailing: “Where were you? Where were you?”

“It’s your father’s fault,” I answered flatly. “The boat key was in his bathing suit.”

For this unluckiness with boats, I blame my mother. My sweet, dear, 98-year-old mother, who, when my father bought her a glossy wooden Greavette in the 1970s, resolutely refused to learn how to dock it. My father spent hours reversing and advancing toward our pipe dock on Whitehouse Beach trying to mansplain the ins and outs of the ideal docking. “When this wind is this way, Doris, spin the wheel right and nudge the throttle forward…”

Sadly, Doris simply would not learn how to nudge the throttle forward.

And so, on our mother-daughter forays on summer afternoons to Dorset or Dwight—or that crafty little shop on the south shore of Lake of Bays run by that cranky old woman—my mother would pull out Plan B or C or D instead of docking.

“Get out,” she’d say, pointing at me, her eight-year-old. “Swim us to shore, I have no idea how to dock this thing.”

And you know what? Every time, I’d do it.

Why?

Because it always made a good story.

I Hope…

I hope you read Summers with Miss Elizabeth, and I hope you love the story as much as I do. It’s coming soon, possibly May 2024 if stars align. Stay tuned to LORI’S STORIES for details, I’ll save you a copy.

NEXT UP: Some inspirational photos, possibly an early peek at the cover. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT, I’d love to hear from you.

Lori Knowles is a writer, author, journalist, co-editor of Ski Canada magazine, and editor of MuskokaStyle.com. Her first novel, Summers with Miss Elizabeth, is coming soon, stay tuned to LORI’S STORIES.