Ok bra, so when I headed to the Keys outta kollage before strapping on the old ball and chain, I bought a 44' Owens($500) with some of my konstruction earnings from a marina which raised it after it sank from a fire, less the engines. A buddy helped me tow it with a 16' aqua sport rental (one at the helm while the other towed) to Bingo's marina on Grassy Key and I had me some deluxe quarters for $40/mo. including elect. We'd be sitting up on the fly bridge after work drinking beers and tourists would occasionally stop and try to hire me for charters. She was a looker, just no engines.
Anyhoo, she had palmetto bugs and when I was bored at night I'd turn the lights off then back on and would swat a few until they scurried back to cover. I had bought these large straw mats for floor cover and you could hear the hooks in their legs get caught on the mats as they scurried about, that's what started the 'war'.
I got kicked out of Bingos marina after a near hurricane, being the largest boat in this little ma and pa place my boat acted as a giant sail and nearly dragged half the marina out to sea. So me and a buddy rented another little fishing boat and towed her thru' the Vaca cut to a vacant key on the other side of Marathon. I lived unfettered rent free there another ten months or so when we had another approaching hurricane and after attending some buddies hurricane party I stumbled home and plopped in to blissful unconciousness. I awoke with my hand dangling in the water which filled half the salon and was wall to wall with palmetto bugs on the surface swimming for their lives. The boat had sat down on the rudders in the extreme tides and was resting on the bottom 6' down. I climbed thru' the window and was standing on the gunnels wondering what the hell do I do now when a grinning Coast Guard crew came around the corner and provided me with some sawdust and a coffee can and instructed me to dive down and release the sawdust around the rudders to seal them. Worked like a charm and I already had a small battery run pump on board which only required 5 minutes a day to keep everything copacetic.
Can you imagine, I would probably be fined if not worse today. Anyway, when I decided to leave and rejoin the real world, I sold the boat to a hippie couple and their kids who had been begging me for months to sell the boat (or give them most likely)as they were desperate for affordable quarters plus they thought it was cool as hell, you know, sustainable living from the sea and all. After I was assured that he realized what he was getting into; 1) I had been boarded by shore patrol twice as it later became known to me that the boat was a former drug runner and indeed had been torched in an attempt to destroy evidence, 2) it had been sunk twice despite it's pristine appearance, I would sell it to him for what I paid as I was ready to get the frick outta Dodge anyway.. Conversely the boat was palmetto bug free seeing nary a one after the sinking.
...and we all lived happily ever after, shew, that was a long way around to get to my best palmetto bug story, eh?
