Adam Bolonsky

Here's a close-up satellite shot of Monomoy where the island splits in two at the north and south islands and gives way at South Beach to the open ocean. The guzzles and drains here, formed by the drilling of the tides, are really deep. Stripers cruise those channels then slide up onto the shallows. With polarized glasses here on a sunny calm day, the big fish oozing back and forth on the flats are quite a sight. Currents run quick here. Easiest to leave with the outgoing, return with the in.

Mark Stephens and Jason "The Monster" Kates land at Block Island after making the eight-mile crossing from Point Judith. True to form, Stephens's fishing gear lies in wait on the foredeck. He caught one bluefish, the rest of the weekend nothing but skunks. High winds prevented us from paddling back to the mainland two days later, so we took the ferry. Just as well, seeing what kind of coffee Stephens had been drinking all morning before snow began to fall onshore. This was Halloween weekend '05.

Hey Ernie: I'm trying to remove the bolts on the thermostat housing on my '93 Toyota. Any ideas on how to do so without snapping the bolt or shearing the head? It's probably the orginal, thus twelve years on. Someone mentioned heat. I have a propane torch but am wondering whether that gets hot enough to help loosen a frozen-on bolt. Any help you can send along would be appreciated. Recent records on thread posts withstanding, this is a real post.

John, could you send me the URL? Trying to lift images out of the NASA World Wind nearly gave me a hernia. And besides, I use a Mac, which the viewer doesn't seem to support....(?)

Any ideas on how to color correct this composite image? I'd assume the eyedropper tool would do well, but images as complex as this are WAY out of my league.... By the way, this shows both Monomoys, the start of the Chatham Break, Hardings Beach, Stage Harbor, and the Morris Island causeway. Pretty much all there is to Monomoy unless you plan like Jim Hartley to use Monomoy as a starting point for a paddle to Great Point, Nantucket. Hartely is even more of a whackjob than Stephens but perhaps not as grumpy.

It's an awesome place to fish or paddle and an adventure even if the skunk is out. It's the southeasternmost tip of Cape Cod where Chatham dribbles off in the direction of Nantucket's Great Point. Big stripers along the edges of the bars where they drop off into the deepwater, lots of blues and bonito at the rips at the southernmost tip (far right) and along the guzzles on the west side (center left). I hacked this image together from a pile of files I picked up via ftp at the Massachusetts GIS site. The colors are screwy because I think the sectioned pictures were taken in sequence at different tides and times of day. Anywow, the scale here on this image is roughly nine/ten miles from left to right, or north to south (shown here horizontal so the image fits on the NEKF site). Obviously the gap at South Beach has changed but everything else is essentially the same, especially the gaps between the two Monomoys. Look carefully and you'll see that the gap is shootable by at least three routes regardless of the tide. This is a great place to paddle and fish but man you have to work hard to get far enough away the put-in to the big fish: rountrip minimum usually is roughly nine miles from Stage Harbor or Morris Island. Worth it. In some spots it's like flatsfishing for bonefish. And from Chatham you also have access to the amazing rips and whitewater at the Chatham Harbor breach if you're a whackjob like Stephens and company.

Thanks for all the help, everybody. I went to the Massachusetts state GIS site and downloaded a pile of high res TIFF files. Wow what a terrific resource. Their aerials of Monomoy are superannuated, of course, but the essential impressions are there: intricate channels. Also the basics are the same, as they probably will be for another decade. The Southway is still the Southway, the gap at South Beach is there, if differently shaped, and the deep channels which at any tide connect the southway through the two Monomoys to Common and Halloween Flats and the Shark Hole are there, running, as ever, counterintuitive and snaky. Thanks again.

Anybody have access to or know of links to high res, royalty-free aerial photos of Monomoy Island? I need a couple for an upcoming story in WaveLength about the island. Thanks adambolonsky at yahoo dot com

So Mark Stephens and Jason The Monster Kates and me head out to Block Island Thursday a.m., the 28th, from the Harbor of Refuge at Point Judith. Block Island standing dark on the horizon like a continent. We're rigged for trolling and casting. Jason is safety officer, Mark my photo model, me the writer and arranger of lodgings, and off we go to fulfill a writing assignment for a magazine. The surf is high off the point: leftover groundswell from the hurricane. We boot it: course 220 magnetic, headed for Sandy Point. Mark is trolling a broken-back swimmer the size of a mackerel --- just as well, as its drag reduces his pace. I go into my mocking routine, lecturing Mark from several yards away (at his stern), using an old patter which essentially by mocking Mark's lack of fishing prowess guarantees that he will hook up before me. "Grasshopper, once you have learned how pointless it is to troll a swimmer, during an eight-and-a-half mile crossing, fishing for stripers over waters that are of a depth appropriate for deep leadcore only, then you will have arrived and will be a locust, not a grasshopper boy." It takes us two and a three quarters hours to reach Sandy Point. Mark and I have to chase Jason the whole way. The Monster averages four-plus knots for the crossing, and this character has been sea kayaking since only, I dunnow, last spring. The rip at Sandy Point is going off: the ebbing easterly tide is getting shoved along by the westerly breeze, which is blowing now at about 10 or 13 kts. The chalk line downwater of the rip is filled with rafted birds: cormorants, gulls, terns, lots of which are wheeling and diving. Mark gets whacked by a bluefish he hauls in: a big-headed 31-incher. It takes a long while to get the treble hooks out of its jaw and gills. I know most of the uninformed think bluefish are skanky ("ewww, they're oily!"), but we land at Sandy Point, light the stove in the lee of a sanddune, open the cooking oil, cook the fish, and after some frying the three of us are digging into that bluefish hungrily: corn meal, coriander, salt and lemon juice and fried crusty. So back into the kayaks for the final six or so miles to Old Harbor. We land in a heavy shorebreak, at Ballards, on a steep beach east of the breakwater, then hoof it upland on Spring Street in drysuits and wetsuits to the inn where we'll be staying. We pass a few nights there. I explore the south end of the island on foot, descend to the narrow beach beneath the clay cliffs while Mark and Jason launch and begin a circumnavigation of the island. Some shore fishers have set up with surf rods on the South Point, built themselves shelters from jetsom. Several party boats out of Montauk are working the 10 fathom line. The horizon line far south and east, and Long Island Sound's, is an angry writhing snake. Mark trolls half the perimeter of the island, from Old Harbor to New Harbor, 13 miles, and comes up with nothing. Around 5:00 he and Jason tell me via VHF that they have taken the New Harbor saltway all the wayinto the center of the island and are about to portage back to the starting point over narrow Crescent Beach. The water is warm: nearly 65 degrees. Day to leave (Saturday) it dawns cold, breezey, snotty: a raw wind from the north, whitecaps, steep groundswell. We lay around the waterfront a while waiting for the sea to lay down and the wind to die, and by 12:30 that is happening. But by then Mark has drunk all of the brandy from the snifters in our rooms at the inn, and Jason and I have calculated it too small a window to attempt a direct openwater 12.5 mile crossing, with too little room for safety. So, on to the 1:30 ferry: $22 per kayak/angler. The outgoing ferry back at the mainland is loading up with revelers geared up for a wild Block Island Halloween. Best fishing here looks to be the Sandy Point reef: plenty of bait. Had we more time I'm sure we could have done better troling the island's shores to the west and east. If the blues are still there, stripers should be too. But it's tough to fish when your hands are freezing. Total paddling distances: me: 15 miles The Monster: 35 (15 plus 13 plus 7 backtracking to jeer at Mark and me) Mark: 28 miles fish total: 1 blue, half of which we threw away because it was too much for all three of us to eat in one sitting on the beach. Other fish totals: The 1661 Inn's breakfast buffet: One bluefish which nobody but Mark and me ate, between flutes of champagne, and both of which the inn put out for breakfast the day we were scheduled to leave. I'd much recommend the place, especially the Manisses Hotel.

Hey Ed, get in touch. Could be a good week for a test paddle. Adam adambolonsky@yahoo.com (781) 643-9966

This is pretty germane to the recent heap of posts about BCU, because for me what Rick did goes straight to the point of skilled paddlers giving back to NSPN with no strings attached. Dee recently posted a roughwater day but couldn't make it due to illness. Rick filled in. He's got BCU certs, I guess, and was fully willing to lead a roughwater day with some eager beavers, including myself. Though I didn't participate much (no helmet, intimidation around rocks), I did feel that what he did was selfless. He was willing to teach and share his skills, just as he has always been. One reason I let my NSPN membership lapse a couple years ago was due to the club's paucity of trips that held my interest or that were lead by paddlers whose abililties challenged the ones I had developed on my own. What Rick did was right. I learned stuff that day onwater with him, as did most everyone else. He passed forward what he has learned by way ofcerts. Seems that's where the energy these days should go. Training is great. But as Brian pointed out, the best high level paddlers can do for NSPN is to teach us what they know.

For what it's worth, I'm Pisces, and for what it's worth, too, many probably already know that Nomad is simply Mark Stephens, a certain broad-shouldered guy from down near the south shore. A lot of factors contributed to the success of our trip, not the least of which was the excitement of paddling to a faraway location over warm, fast-moving water that buckles and bends and swirls around mysterious-looking shallows. Those shallows, while all well-charted, are nonetheless spooky to encounter when six or seven miles, or more, from the main shore. They lend a peculiar yellow cast to the water which the water's seasonal fish, both blues and stripers, pick up. Those were the palest fish I have seen, almost ghostly in their silverness. It's been a while since I've been truly excited by the idea of paddling the waters of Massachustts, and this trip did a lot to re-kindle my slumbering enthusiasm for vast waters close to home. For those of you who don't know, the two Sound's waters run in a bifurcated plume. Picture a drain pipe shaped exactly like a "Y", with Muskeget Channel, off the Vinevard's Wasque Point, as the vertical shaft of the pipe. The crotch of the"Y" is near Cape Poge, by a marked shoal. The tides run down the antlers of the Y, both coming and going, and gain velocity in the stem. They move FAST. I've fished Duxbury Bay lots on the tide, riding the Bay's fast streams from flat to flat, in both darkness and fog, while looking for fish. What has always mitigated the threat there for me has been the bay's endpoints: marshes and a tidal river at the west and north ends, the Cowyard and the distinctive grasses of the Cowyard and the Bug Light area. Disconcerting there, to me, has been somwehat how many eddies and backspins the currents there form, but there has always been those benign endpoints to consider. Paddle there enough times and most will fling one's kayak into that bay with the same confidence that you might pick up your cat and stand it on its head. You know you can do pretty much whatever you want. Neither Vineyard nor Nantucket Sounds struck me that way, mostly for their vastness, also for their deep fogs, secondarily for their ferry traffic, and most viscerally for my not knowing what to expect. Had I known our trips flash points by way of experience rather than chart-and-tables inference I might have been less nervous about the trip. But as Mark told me while we were discussing the trip, if the idea of it didn't make me nervous I probably wouldn't have wanted to do it. The bifurcating tidal flumes were amazing not only in their complexity but also in their power, constancy, and well-worn vectors. When we needed southeastern aid, a long and sustained push, we in spades got it. So too the speed we needed when running northwestward. If you take a long look at Eldridge's chart tables, those which reference Pollock Rip, and the chart maps which follow, you can see both why we had such an amazing first two-and-a-half legs of this trip, and why, for both going out and coming back, the last two and six miles, respectively, were such ass-kickers. Steep groundswell off Cape Ann aside, op\r the clapitois off Mistake Island of Maine's Jonesport, these were some of the roughest waters I have ever been in , if only for their abrupt and choatic steepness. Otherwise the waters were quite pacific --- the initial 15 miles such a cakewalk I started giving Mark crap for taking us on such a wimpy trip. Muskeget is lonely, desolate, and forbidding all at once. It is also untrammelled and uninhabited and as mysterious as Monomoy, only more threateing around the perimeter. I wouldn't camp there again, nor recomend it, as not only is there no real cover from the heaviest weather there but also there's neither fresh water nor an easy way off should you get pinned there. I wouldn't have wanted to do this trip without Mark's vast reservoir of knowledge of the dynamics of Nantucket and Vineyard Sounds and his uncannily adept and quick apprehension of how Eldridges' data and diagrams relate to making a three-day, two night trip to not only Muskeget but Tuckernuck. As for Eldridge, it's reliable to all degrees for the prudent mariner, but not entirely for the kayaker. Eldrige did nothing to account for the hells that exist off northwestern end of Tuckernuck and for what surely too boils between Tuckernuck's eastern end and the furthest reaches of Madaket. The water is simply too shallow there for anything but a kayak, and I had the distinct feeling that, given a blown roll and the need for a T-resucue and a pump out near the former we would have had a dicey situation on our hands. The tidal current there accellerates in a way Eldrige had no need to document. Cripes, the only reason why the fishing was so good in that area (even if it was terrific everywhere we dropped a hook) was because the damn fish got trapped in a swirling eddy they could not escape. Picture dogs chasing cats in a drained circular pool and you get the picture. One last note. For complex domestic reasons (read worried girlfriend) I had to contact the Coast Guard for a couple of minutes Monday evening. I don't know which antenna the watchstander at station Woods Hole was using (they coordinate SAR for the area), but Mark's incredibly inexpensive Cobra VHF (two for $80) gave me crystal clear communications over a distance of fifteen-plus miles ---- all with the mere 14 feet of elevation I was able to reach by picking my way carefully up to the top of one of Muskeget's tightly grass-woven dunes. Thanks, Mark, for a great trip! You were the plans and ops officer, me the official worrier and what-ifer!

I need a spare Greenland paddle for four days next week to keep on my foredeck as a spare for a three-day trip. I'd bring my own storm paddle but I need something longer should my primary snap. If you're in the Arlington area or roundabouts, I can pick up and return. Thanks in advance.

anybody know how to get in touch with him. I have some questions to ask him about paddling in Nantucket Sound.

no particular reason to delete except that in future there might be some copyright issues. so, out it goes. Adam

yeah, sorry we missed you guys. Mark and I got on the water around 11:00 after I indulged myself with a long walk after the drive to get the kinks out. But thanks to Dee's Hall's spare blocks of closed-cell foam and Brian Nystrom's seat design, I now have a seat, in the North Bay, which doesn't tie me into fourteen different knots. Kevin O'Malley was out there on the flats too, poking around, but couldn't raise anyone on the radio because either his trasnmit button was busted or his mic had filled with water he'd forgotten to shake out. VHF contact for me was tough most of the day, too, partly because my battery contacts have worn thin. By the time we fully reached you guys via VHF, us on the northeastern strands of the Toupee and you guys on the bar at the South Beach cut, Mark and I were both so spanked by the sun, the wind, and the fishing that we lacked the motivation to slide over through the North/South gut and meet you. It was hard work, chasing large schools of feeding bluefish over the shallows: getting into position to cast into them, casting, hooking up, getting the fish off the hook and onto the foredeck, then having to paddle the couple hundred yards back upwind to get back into the thick of them. Luckily enough no matter how deep the water on the western flats there's always a piece of sandbar, somewhere, to step out of the boat on and regroup. The blues were feeding heavily on a combination of silversides and sandeels as well as some freshly-hatched herring. Their stomachs were full of them. Anglers by necessity have to complain about how local fishing pressure often pushes the fish far offshore. What's nice about the Monomoy Flats is that the water's too shallow for anything but kayaks and the fish are often so far west and north that only anglers in long fast boats can get to them. And even better, only a few of New England's thousands of "real" seakayakers have an interest in fish...all day, Mark and I had each and every of the dozen or so schools that ripped up the flats that afternoon to ourselves! Wahoo! What a blast!

...they're all in the current East Coast issue of WaveLength. Brian writes about gelcoat repair, Hall about racing the Blackburn and the Run of the Charles, Jacques about roughwater paddling Woods Hole, and Schade about surfing the Long Island Race. If you can't find a copy of the mag at your local paddling shop, I have extras. Just send me an 8.5" x 11" self-addressed envelope with $2.50 in postage on it and I'll send you a copy. (you won't get put on any mailing lists). Here's my address: 76 Gloucester Street Arlington, MA 01476

I've been out to Monomoy roughly forty times over the past five seasons, both the western flats, eastern shore, through the ever-changing southway, past and on and in the landmarks the Toupee, the Birthday Cake, Halloween Flats, and have even dared to roll, with Richard Beckham, in the Deep Blue Hole of Death inside Common Flat at the north tip of South Monomoy. The southern tip of South Monomoy on a circumnav. can be a lot of fun, especially if Stone Horse Shoal is rearing up its heals in an easterly or an offshore storm is blowing its nose on Handkerchief Shoals. The dumpers, all-around but for the west side, can be enormous. If any of you guys want to hook up with me (literally), let's put the discussion on the private trips board. I hate the place as a daytrip, so if we can crash or camp out at somebody's on the south Cape I'd be up for it. Why, just a week ago Yvonne and Karen Gladsonte and me walked half the length of Monomoy from Chatham Light to the tombolo at the end of South Beach, then back. Took over five hours. Winds at 20 knots-plus, not a soul on the water, blown sand shaving the hair off my shins and cleaning the scalp. We brought along a man to keep Karen amused but halfway through he hightailed it home over one of the dry sanddunes. I'm always up for a trip to that place, whether in cockpit or on foot. Just bear with me while I troll for bluefish or another of the bonito that spoiled fishing for me for three consecutive seasons four years ago. Hooked one, landed it, then wanted after that no other species else.

As I tried very hard to make a point of, reasons to do this include: -staying at all times within your boat -not having to deploy a T or H to empty a flooded boat -not having to rely on a rescuer to lift and empty your boat -not getting separated from your boat -not getting exposed top-to-bottom to cold water -remembering that IN your kayak unless you're upside-down in rocks with breakers and boomers is the safest place of all, and is after all where you started out -learning that not having a roll does NOT necessarily leave you upside down and helpless. By contrast with rolling, the rat swim is a negligibly athletic move. If you can swim you can rat swim. This is not a silly move. Suppose you drop your paddle and can't hand roll. The rat swim gets you to the paddle. And so on. Try it. Conceivebly your paddle is tethered or retrievable. I keep mine tethered because fishing precludes the too-laborious process of stowing it. Silly stuff? I'm assuming not. Most everything done in kayaks, in fact everything done in kayaks, in fact kayaks themselves, originate from not silly notions but a willingness to experiment. Otherwise the sport would never move forward. For other examples: the goofy paddle float (both the inflatable and the permanent brick style), ripping out stock seats and replacing them with foam, utilizing climbers gear for contact tows, adopting Greenland hard chine designs to round, fish-form, and swede-form hulls. All these come from a willingness to sidestep accepted norms Put it this way. If the original incredibly narrow and amazingly long (18' by 18") Greenland kayak made from skin and without hatchces or bulkheads were the only ones available right now, how many of us would be paddlers?. Someone had to be willing to change, to adapt, to adopt, and to modify accepted norms.... Finally,I didn't create this move but am adopting it after having learned it from a whitewater boater. Those paddlers truly put themselves in harm's way, and often. Not that that makes them superior boaters..... I could go on, but...'nuff said.

Note: the following has neither been assessed nor tested by any governing body and is offered for comment and suggestion only. The Rat Swim as Rescue Altnernative Of all the rescue moves kayakers regularly practice (and should!), perhaps none is more ubiquitous than the assisted rescue. In that by now well-known rescue, immediately a paddler capsizes he pops the sprayskirt, wet exits, and bobs up to the surface before with the assistance of another paddler he empties his flooded kayak with a T or H maneuver and clambers back into his boat. There’s a fair amount of swimming around and muscling of capsized boat involved. In theory, once the paddler has scrambled back into his cockpit and snugged down his spray skirt, off everyone goes, nothing left to do now but to reassemble the self confidence each needs to paddle in a pod weakened by a capsize. The problem with this well-practiced rescue, at least from the perspective of many, and certainly from seakayakers who have backgrounds in whitewater boats (I don’t), is the truth of exposure. The presumption of an assisted rescue is too often a wet exit and a paddler struggling to get back into his boat. Further, not only is the victim separated from the most significant source of flotation available (his own boat) but also he is also literally off his horse, his most viable mode of transportation home. Here’s an alternative. Next time you capsize, try the rat swim rather than a wet exit from your boat. Here’s how to do it. 1. First, figure out what many sports instructors would call your chocolate foot, or the foot you feel most coordinated kicking a soccer ball. Your chocolate foot is the foot you capsize towards to learn the move. (Right chocolate footers capsize starboard; left chocolate footers port.) 2. After you’ve capsized towards your chocolate foot, stay underwater. Count to five or so. This will help you relax, which is key to the move. 3. Now allow your body to go limp within the cockpit. Specifically, allow your hips to go as limp as possible. To achieve this, remove your feet from the footpegs and let your knees and thighs press against each other loosely. 4. Now twist your entire body over within your cockpit, as if to kneel upon the inside of the starboard side of your boat (port for left chocolate-footers.) You will find that this position rolls your chest over and down, your back over and up, so that your torso lies parallel to the water’s surface. Keep your knees, feet, thighs and hips relaxed and LOOSE. 5. Gently begin to dog paddle, as if pulling big piles of laundry towards your sternum. Wow! Look! The combination of dog paddle, your body’s position and your pfd’s flotation will float your chest and head towards the surface. One more stroke and…. now your head has broken the water’s surface. You are free now to take a calm breath and either look around or allow your torso to sink once more below the surface. 6. Now plan what you really want to do. Shall you float up once more for another breath and have a look around? Shall you check to see whether your paddling partner has placed his kayak in position for a bow or crossbar rescue? Or do you want to take another breath and try a roll? Do you really think it would be better — no? --- to wet-exit and begin that long and involved flooded boat rescue this article has tried to talk you out of? TIPS AND POINTERS Here are pointers should the rat swim and the supplies of breath it allows elude: If after you capsize and go upside down you feel confused about what to do, imagine that your kayak is completely see-through. Now imagine that you aren’t wearing any shorts, and that what you really want to do is moon the paddlers above you. (Hey, humor helps you relax.) To moon your pals, of course, you will need to twist over in your cockpit in order to flash your rear end skyward. Hey! This position helps you float your torso towards the surface. (If necessary, take the image of mooning even further. If you can’t picture yourself skinny-dipping with hindquarters shining gleefully on the water’s surface, you haven’t yet twisted far enough over.) If these pointers fail, try these as last resort: Don’t force your head to the surface. Instead, dog paddle as gently as possible. The less you exert yourself the more likely your pfd’s buoyancy will help you float your head to the surface. Once your head breaks the water’s surface, change your dog paddle to a modified breaststroke by making, with your hands, a series of heart-shaped patterns below your sternum. Should all else fail, be sure you push away from your body, with your knees, the side of the boat you capsized towards. The motion will help you flop your kayak fully upside down on top of you and make it that much easier for you to arch your back and float your head towards the surface. So really. Why the rat swim and not a wet-exit’s immediate execution? For one, you avoid flooding your kayak, which otherwise will require emptying by way of a time-consuming T or H rescue. Second, with the rat swim, you remain IN your boat, which is where you were before you flipped over. Third, and perhaps most important, the rat swim may help you realize that capsizes, even for paddlers who cannot roll, do not necessarily mean you are in the position of a flailing ladybug who cannot right herself. Instead, with the rat swim, you become a ladybug just patiently chillin’, as they say, and pretty much enjoying herself, as she waits for her partner to amble over and offer her a paddle or a bow or a hand with which to right herself. The rat swim rules!

Thanks for the offer, Jason. But I'll probably try a friend's for the day locally, who is closer than Haverhill. I'm just trying to get a bead on which composite boat does what. All these years in wooden kayaks and I haven't a clue --- just an hour here or there in an Explorer, another two or three in a Romany. They're certainly different than hard chine wooden boats. And certainly a hell of a lot heavier!!

What do you guys hear about the Widlnerness Systems Tempest 17? Has a drop skeg and so on, I know, looks like it's well made, but how does it perform? Someone said to me a couple of weeks ago it's the closest you can get to an Explorer without actually having to buy an Explorer. What says the composites peanut gallery?

Huh. Gugeon Brothers says 200 F, but you're the man when it comes to home science projects, Brian, so I'll take your word for it before I take the no doubt lawyer-vetted words of a website for truth. Guys were probably afraid of fire anyhow and probably had figured that anyone who's wooding an old kayak will get so bored baking it at 200 he'll just quit and build a new goddam boat like he's supposed to. Allright: so: anyone got a heat gun that heats up to at least 400 F so I can blister the fiberglass off an old CLC Patuxent 17.5?

I need one that heats up as high as 200 F so that I can blister some fiberglass off a wooden boat yet not light on fire the boat or the house or the neighbor's cat. Send me an email or call (781) 643-9966. Help bring a fast and noble kayak back to life!

I was impressed with that classic beginner's boat the Explorer the other night at a skills session and was wondering if any of the club's or message board's wooden boat afficianados locally or not know of a strip-built that performs similarly: lots of secondary, fast and slippery, and yet with a quick and seaworthy high volume bow that doesn't wire in weathercocking. What a nice boat. But awfully damn heavy. Seems too that there are very few Explorers on the used market right now that owners don't justifiably want both arm and leg for.