“We won the 19th annual Virginia Beach Billfish Tournament the next year,” Healey says. They went on to take second at the Big Rock Blue Marlin Tournament in Morehead City, North Carolina, releasing three blue marlin, missing out on first place by minutes, not number of fish caught. In 1987, Healey and his team won top boat in the White Marlin Open along with weighing-in the second-place blue marlin. They were competing in billfish tournaments throughout the Mid-Atlantic states, and Viking was selling more and more fishboats. In 1985, the team made 20 trips offshore in 1987, it was 30 and climbing. Between tournaments, he delivered new Vikings. The helm became McDowell’s domain, and he went on to become one of the top billfish captains on the Mid-Atlantic coast. Along the way, Healey realized his best fit was in the cockpit turning the reel handle, as opposed to turning the steering wheel. They were becoming a team, making the mistakes required to improve and constantly getting more competitive. They’d make the 100-mile run from Cape May to the Washington Canyon in three hours, just to get in on a hot bite. They rigged a new 48-foot convertible with tackle and electronics, and it was a fast boat. Drew had just gotten his six-pack license, so we put him at the helm and hired a really good mate by the name of Craig Hurt.” It wasn’t until 1985, when Drew McDowell came on the scene, that the demo program and tournament fishing got serious. We were young we fished hard and gained a lot of respect from other boats because we had fun doing it. “We did it all and learned along the way. “We didn’t have a mentor or knowledgeable captain back then we all shared duties, taking turns at the helm, in the cockpit, rigging baits,” he adds. And the hook for offshore fishing was set for life. Hall outfitted it for offshore fishing, named it Tomcat and entered a few billfish tournaments, bringing young Healey along as crew. Powered by a pair of Caterpillar 3208 diesels, the boat was fast for its time. Around that time, a new 35-foot Viking fishing model caught the eye of Tom Hall, a salesman for Giles and Ransome, a distributor that supplied engines to Viking. Healey was still in high school at the time, and his earliest experiences offshore left a lasting impression. Viking called it the 37 Sportfish, and Healey remembers fishing a few offshore tournaments on one that Viking employee Bill Cross owned. One had a small cockpit and larger saloon, and the second had smaller accommodations and a larger cockpit for fishing. The company had dipped its toe into the fishboat market in 1972 with a 37-foot convertible offered in two configurations. Soon, Healey and a few co-conspirators at Viking started encouraging his father to build a factory demo boat to use in tournaments. We’d fill garbage cans with them as long as we could get shedder crab to put on the Upperman bucktails they favored.” “Eventually, I got a trailer and my driver’s license, and I’d take it to Cape May to catch tiderunners in Delaware Bay during their heyday in the mid-’70s. “That green-and-white motor smoked like a son of a bitch, but we fished it all over Great Bay, catching weakfish with my buddies,” Healey recalls. A Viking employee found a 40-hp Johnson that was 8 years old and had never been started. If she'd had Growing Up Skipper (long off the market by the time she was old enough to appreciate it), or perhaps if her teachers did, the whole incident could have been avoided.He sanded and painted, found seats and had them upholstered, installed steering gear and new wiring. The faculty were projecting their own perceptions onto her nubile young body, the sick freaks. Now, the outfit was more modest than what at least some of her schoolmates were wearing that very day. Her attire, her teachers felt, was a little too mature for a junior high school student. Someone I know has told me the story of being called into the principal's office to be queried about her home life. I suppose (again, never having been a prepubescent girl) geeklizzard isn't wrong to say that menstruation is more disruptive, if nothing else, than bigger tits, but the visible bodily changes can be traumatic too. A friend, a year younger than I, says she had one of these growing up.įor actual women, I imagine, it was a way to experience the phenomenon at a remove, as it were. Maybe it's because I'm a man that I found this disturbing when I first learned of it-after all, I never had to deal with my own breasts growing, and the ensuing change in how I was regarded by my peers (actually, my breasts did grow, but I digress).

Growing up skipper boy