I promised to share some excerpts from my book here to get you excited about getting your hands on a copy. Here’s the next installation in that series I’ll title “Taunting Signs.” I hope you enjoy it!
When I got home after that first success after my first day on the water in May of 2010, there were lots of questions to answer. As word got out amongst my friends and family I got a lot of good questions. Don’t you need a license to do that? Does your insurance cover that? Do you have enough life jackets to carry that many people? Don’t you need to form a corporation or something? I went about the task of answering those questions and in that process realized that I was nowhere near ready to start this business. The United States Coast Guard requires you to get a captain’s license to be able to carry passengers for hire. Bartering for goods and services isn’t even available as a loophole. Among the qualifications were a long list of strict requirements including taking a menacing exam and documenting 360 days of sea time on the water in your boat. I wasn’t even close.
I checked out this getting your captain’s license book at the library to find out it would be no small task to pass the exam to become a captain. I called my insurance agent who told me my insurance wouldn’t cover this and if they found out I was operating commercially my policy would be cancelled. What a bummer. I lost momentum. The sandwich-board signs still marked with “Mother’s Day Special” were filed into the garage not to emerge for some time.
But every day that I would park my car in the garage I would see those signs in there. Every morning I would back out of the garage and I would catch a glimpse of them there, haunting me. I would sometimes dream, “what if I were backing out of the garage to go down to the river this morning instead of going to my day job?” It kept eating away at me. I kept getting confronted with those signs every time I’d go into the garage each day. They were big, they were in the way, and they were taunting me to do something about my dream.
Watch this space for more sneak peeks at some of the book while you’re awaiting delivery of your copy. If you haven’t ordered one yet, head over to www.PortlandBoatTours.com/book to take advantage of the discount (only available until March 10th).
