I bet "So Keen" and "Pascal" know these horses!
Funny...before I had boats, I had show horses - American Saddlebreds which I suppose you could classify as the "Hatteras" of horses. My show circuit included folks like William Shatner, Patrick Swayze, Patrick Duffy, Gaga Gabour (spelling?), etc. which is why I look at the Saddlebred breed on the level that "Hatteras" is in the boating community - they were the "show stoppers" in the public eye, mostly. I was just as passionate about my horse farm then as I now am about my Hatt. I vividly remember "the day" I evolved from "horse world" into "boat world."
I had just finished my Open class at the Portsmouth Horse Show and qualified for the Championship - I was "cleaning house" with my horse (who was a brother to a World Champion) that year. I rode back into the barn after having won the Open class (third week in July in Ohio), dressed in a full suit (pants, long sleeve shirt, vest, tie, tail coat jacket, derby hat and leather boots/gloves - not a piece of exposed skin to cool except for my face) during a day where the temps were in the mid 90s. I just slid off the horse in a moment of heat exhaustion. Someone took the horse away to cool and bathe him, while I laid on a dock box (we called them "tack boxes") begging for help taking all (well, most - I retained my dignity) those clothes off in an effort to catch my breath and cool myself to the point of being able to function again. LOL After a cooling off with less clothes and several buckets of water, I came top my senses...
I left the show that very night, forfeited the Championship, went home and went for my VERY FIRST boat ride (yes, my first time on a boat ever - circa 1990) the next day. By the first week of August that same year, I was the proud owner of my very first boat! I sold the horses, the truck, the trailer and all the tack, and vacated the barn. No regrets. I have not returned to riding since.
The ironic part...I only "thought" that that $100,000+ I spent on horses was a LOT of cash...little did I know how I'd later in life re-think the value of that dollar amount until I owned a Hatt. Still...now SEVERAL hundreds of thousand dollars later...into a Hatt...no regrets!
So, every time I see a horse, I think of where I am now with my boat. It is a reminder of how and why I got here. To me: Horse=Hatt.
