Excellent post Chris!
Currently 43, began at the ripe old age of..... months...
Check out the killer inflatable from the 60's. My dad always was ahead of the curve in adopting new technologies! (somewhere in Maine 1967)
Had grand parents on both the ocean and lakes. Grew up to really dislike the claustrophobia of a lake. Spent summers on the ocean from the age of being born. Sailed, power boated, fished etc. etc. but always liked sailing the most.
Got my first boat of my own at seven. I found it behind a neighbors house, an old rotted wooden sailing dinghy of about 9 feet. Spent the entire summer fixing, sanding and painting it with whatever was in the shed. Proceeded to lauch it in August and it promptly sank. Dragged it home and stuffed the seams some more and got her floating!! Tacking out of the cove on my first sail I blew out the moldy, rotted cotton duck sail and had to row back in.
Went to the boat show with my dad that winter and he bought us a Dyer sailing dinghy. Loved that little boat! Over many summers we owned many, many boats, a Ligntning, Oday mariner, Rhodes 19, Cape Dory Ty, Ranger 23, CD 25 etc. etc. and my relatives had a Hinckley Pilot 35.
My best friends parent also had the most amazing boat I can remember. She was a 52' Bud Macintosh designed & built wooden schooner. Did a couple Bermuda races and lots of cruising on the old green beast. Sailed like a dream and I still yearn to someday own a woody. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, sails like a wooden boat.
When I was ten my dad let me get a sport lobster license and I hauled 5 traps, the limit, out of a 12 foot Sea Nymph with a Johnson 9.9 horse motor. This was pure over the gunnel fishin', and hard. On the weekends my dad would help pull but during the week I did the pulling, baiting and setting. The traps were really much to big for a ten year old at 32" long.
That winter when it came time to renew the license I asked my dad if I could check the box that said "COMMERCIAL" instead of sport. I did and we sent in the $100.00 fee. About a month later my commercial lobster license came in the mail. I was officially the youngest commercial lobster-man in the state of NH, at 11..
So with a loan from my dad, that was a tough conversation, I bought 90 custom made 30" Maine built traps, spent all winter rigging them, and also bought a new boat. She was a 16 foot Amesbury Skiff with a tiller steered Johnson 25 horse motor. At 11 I could not start it reliably so had to add electric start a real "luxury"... Again this was over the gunnel fishin'.
I found out quickly that this boat really was not well suited for pulling traps. She was flat bottomed and quite un-seaworthy with little to no safety flotation. I began romancing a local boat builder who was building a Royal Lowell designed down east style hull. Back then they were called Norton's but today many know them as the Eastern 18. Eastern wound up with the molds after Dick passed away. Dick, a cantankerous old dude, built them behind his house and I would ride my BMX bike up there every week and pester him about building me a boat. At first he just though I was an annoying little punk but then one day he could smell the stench of bait on me and realized I was dead serious.
"You really haul traps?" "You think want to buy one of my boats?" "How are you gonna pay for it?".......
In my best 11 year old "business voice".
"Oh, I've got money, I sell lobsters, lots of lobsters plus I can help you build it!"
He finally relented and let me help earn some $$ towards my new boat by waxing the molds, cutting cloth, shaving stringers, wetting out lamination's and general gophering. At the end of the season he slowed down and we built my boat out of what ever he had lying around including the ugliest color blue gelcoat you've ever seen. She was, thick, heavy and a tank but I fished her every day and she never once let me down despite the "good deal" I got by building her with left overs!
Age 12 hauling traps off Rye NH:
Bringing the old Rhodes into the mooring, perhaps 8 or 9 years old..
From there on there was lots more boats of both power and sail, jobs in boat yards, lots more fishing including 6 years of fishing for Blue Fin Tuna. I also detailed boats and worked on some mega yachts and very large sport fishing yachts as a mate or first mate. In between I would do deliveries and race. Winters I usually worked in bike/ski shops and skied. At 25 I bought my first cruising boat that I could call my own, a 27 footer. Today I am content cruising with the family and still do some work on boats on the side because I always enjoy it.