Bob Schleimer is telling me how he got involved in boats. “I moved to Fremont in 1980,” he says. “I had a garage full of planes because I’d been flying since I was 12 years old.

“A neighbor comes by one day, sees the planes and says, ‘Hey, man. You’ve got to get a boat so we can race!’

“He was building a boat at the time. I say, ‘No—I’m just interested in planes.’ But he persists, and he drags me to the hobby store where he bought his boat.

“Next thing I know, I’ve spent about a thousand dollars and I own all the stuff you need to race boats, including a monohull boat with a .21 engine.

Smashing Conclusion. “A few days later, I come out of my house and I see skid marks in his driveway. He’s run over his boat!

“‘Screw boats!’ he says. ‘I tried to paint this three times and the paint keeps running!’

“His boat was smashed, a bunch of pieces under his truck.

“So we never raced, but I figured I might as well finish my boat, so I did. And I started racing it at the Campbell percolating pond by Highway 17.”

Bob’s boat period lasted about 20 years.

From Fuel to Electric. By the time I met him a couple of years ago, he’d returned to his first love: airplanes. And he’d gone electric.

A former aircraft mechanic, Bob enjoys building his own planes. Like most of us, Bob’s idea of a proper plane is a built-up balsa plane, meticulously covered and painted. Like many of us who enjoy flying, he’s backslid into foamies. They’re cheap, quick to build and they fly great. After a while, you start to think they look OK, too.

Anyway, I met Bob while I was still struggling to keep a plane in the air. He’d show up with a foam creation—a twin-engine profile bomber, a biplane, a 3D plane, a flying saucer—and fly it every day for weeks, trimming, tweaking, refining it to perfection.

Dry Wit. Bob was one of my regular weekday companions. His flying was inspiring and I enjoyed his stories and his very dry humor.

Some months ago, Bob told me about an upcoming model boating event in the area. “I’d like to go,” I said. So Bob made plans. But when the day came I changed my mind and didn’t join him.

Bob went, and that was the last we saw of him. The noise, the spray, the smell of fuel, seeing old friends revived his boating impulses.

Now he completely blames me for his defection from flying.

Sunday Meeting. I know this because I see him at Baylands Sunday morning. He’s come to pick up some gear from a friend. When he sees me, he asks if I wanted to see where he races boats. “Sure,” I say.

So I follow his beat-up van, which now tows a wooden trailer, over to Fremont, to Kaiser Cove.

It’s a biggish pond with buoys describing an oval raceway. It’s managed by the Alameda County Water District, Bob explains, and is part of the East Bay Regional Park District.

Bob unpacks his trailer. Lots of boat stuff, which he loads onto a nice homemade double-decker cart.

Meeting the Boaters. At water’s edge I meet Alfred and Steve and, a bit later, Wild Bill. Not Bill. Wild Bill.

They all rev their fuel-powered boats around the course, getting ready for a real race next weekend. Bob points out the differences. Nitro. Gas. Hydroplane. Monohull. Cat. Tunnel Boat.

Between taking pictures, I ask lots of naive questions.

A Fatal Turn. At one point, Bob and Wild Bill are racing around the buoys, cutting the turns very tight. Bob crowds Wild Bill, who has the inside track. Next thing I know, Bob’s boat is rolling over and over and over, settling dead in the water, upside down.

Bob rows out to get it.

A bit later, Wild Bill’s boat abruptly stops responding. The motor quits and the boat floats idly about 100 feet offshore.

Boaters, I discover, have their own version of the Fetchomatic 3000: a spinning rod with a weighted float.

Wild Bill casts and falls a bit short. Another cast, also short. A few more tries and he gives up.

Wild Bill rows out to get it.

Pros & Cons. During the morning, I notice these advantages over flying airplanes:

• No vertical challenges (stalling, landing, looping)
• Wind doesn’t matter much
• You’ll never hit a tree
• Landing is pretty easy

I notice these challenges:

• Racing requires a pinpoint sense of space
• If you go inverted, you stay inverted
• Sometimes you’ve got to row

It’s a lovely sunny Sunday with no wind, a relief from a few days of cloudy and turbulent weather, and I thoroughly enjoy this aquatic adventure.

Just before we’re ready to leave, I fire up one of my little wings and fly it around the cleared parking area for about 10 minutes.

I fly inverted and swoop and loop and enjoy the vertical possibilities, then I land and walk across the grass to retrieve the plane.

Why would anyone want a boat?

See the Fast Boats photo album for a gallery of shots from the day.

Tags: Flying, Life, People, Radio Control, Water.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 9th, 2007 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Elsewhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.