The best outboard FOR the world

Last night I brought the newest nautical bling home.

An essentially unused British Seagull Engine that I persuaded Island Time Jim to sell to me before he took off down south. I have long had a great affinity and love for this engine, even though arguably there are more efficient outboards out there. The Seagull is a salty engine that sounds like it means business, packs a ton of torque for its little horsepower and is a true classic, no longer being produced.

I first became aware of this unique engine many years ago on the docks of the Kodiak boat harbor. I had this friend, Charlie Naughton, a half Irish, half Aleut jovial, brilliant madman who owned his own small halibut boat, Wenonah. Charlie instinctually knew where the big flounder lurked, and like any good fisherman drank like a fish…..

Later, after I had returned to Kodiak, eventually migrating to Dutch Harbor via big steel crabber, I ran into Charlie Naughton again, this time occasionally making trips with him on Wenonah that rainy summer, along with his other crew-person, Pam. Pam was Charlies girlfriend, a Harvard educated, plump, self perceived intellectual, an essentially brainless muffin who lacked any semblance of common sense.

Wenonah had no head, and thus the venerable five gallon bucket served as the necessary vessel. Charlie had thoughtfully stolen a toilet seat from the fishermans shower up by the harbormasters office, making the apparatus a bit more civil to use.

Wenonah was about thirty five feet long, and powered by a huge outdrive inboard gas engine, just about the very worst power any boat can have. Outdrive units only last about as long as it takes to untie the bow lines, steam away for a couple of days and return to port to retie, never to operate again. Wenonah, however was fast with pointed, sexy prow and sleek lines. When Charlie shoved the throttle forward, it stood right up and got on plane, making maybe 30 or 35 miles an hour.

First day out with them,  Pam decides she needs to pee. She goes below with the bucket, returning topside a moment later to dump the contents over the stern as the boat clips merrily along on Monashka bay where we had a couple of long line strings. Charlie shouts back over his shoulder “Don’t forget to rinse it out”, figuring she’d use the deck wash that we used to wash the halibut blood off of things before it got too slippery. What does she do? She tosses the bucket over the side (it had a long rope) to scoop up some water…….

Imagine, it’s like tossing a sea anchor over going thirty. Damn near jerked her arms out of the socket, as the bucket, toilet seat, and (thank God) attached float are ripped out of her hands into the wake. I laughed and tapped Charlie on the shoulder nodding aft where the float could be seen like one of the longline markers we had launched earlier.

Charlie introduced me to the joys of vodka and sweet pickle juice as a legitimate cocktail having concocted the libation out of necessity on the anchor in some secluded bay on Afognak Island when he ran out of anything else to mix that nasty Popov vodka with. Now, I probably wouldn’t serve it for sundowners (although some day I just might), but as I recall it wasn’t that bad….I’m sure it would do in a pinch.

Because Wenonah was an outdrive powered boat, prone to fits of poor or no operation, Charlie had purchased a British Segull engine as an emergency kicker, mounting a stern mount right next to the “W” written in small letters on her tail.

One day while walking up the dock, heading up town I spied Charlie’s head just aft of the stern of Wenonah, just above the cold, cold water. Hurrying over there, thinking maybe he had fallen in, in a drunken stupor I inquired. “Charlie! Are you OK?”. He just grinned, beet red from the cold. Pam poked her head out of the aft door of Wenonah’s house and calmly answered; “He dropped the seagull over the side…..he’s trying to get it off of the bottom.”

The bottom lay some 25 feet down, and before I could offer to get my scuba gear to help out, Charlie dove down again, and in several long moments, surfaced with the British Seagull triumphantly held overhead. Unceremoniously he plopped it onto the dock, and scrambled out of the water clad only in blue jeans.

Charlie went inside Wenonah’s house and changed into dry clothes, emerging a few minutes later.

Back on the dock he turned on the water hose and thoroughly flushed the diminutive British Seagull for a long, long time. He drained the gasoline into a rusty old coffee can, disconnected the carb, opened it up and dried it off, dried everything else that he could get to, resembled everything warmed it up in the cabin for awhile, poured in some fresh gasoline, this time carefully attaching it to the stern, wound the start rope, and the thing started on the first pull……

I fell in love on the spot.

I vowed if I ever ran across one of these wonderful (but cantankerous) engines and it happened to be for sale, I would not hesitate to purchase it. So when Island Time Jim casually mentioned he actually had one that he did not use, well, the rest as they say is history.

I haven’t run it yet, but I plan to real soon. I have the formulation for all of the incantations necessary to get it to start the first time, and when it does……I’m going to celebrate with a vodka and pickle juice.