[Fr. Frank]

As I sit here reading, I remembered an incident I had tried very hard to forget. It's a classic boo-boo.

When I was about 10 years old, my grandfather, who was a retired Navy officer, and I were going fishing on his early 1950's 45' Rybovich Sportfisherman, leaving from Lake Worth Yacht Club. (Now long gone) As we were preparing to leave, we pulled up to the fuel dock to take on fuel. My grandfather asked if I could handle fueling the boat, to which I proudly replied, "Yes". He went up to the harbor master's office to get ice and bait, and I got the gas hose, and began to put gas in the boat. (The boat had twin Chrysler Imperial motors)

After a couple of minutes, my grandfather came out, and turned off the gas right at the pump. He casually walked over to me, lifted the gas nozzle out of the rod holder, moved it over 4 inches to the open gas fill, and in a very calm voice said, "I think this'll work better". But I had already put about 8-10 gallons of gas into the bilge. He calmly turned on the bilge pumps, and then went in and bought a gallon of boat soap, and poured it into the bilge, and then added lots of water. I finished filling the twin 300 gallon fuel tanks, through the fuel fill this time, and we then went fishing.

I never did that again.