I better start writing this down

All of this really started in February, 2006. My brother, Mike, called to say words which would later change my life. "I bought a boat," he said. The proud owner of a new 2006 Sea Ray Sundancer 300 power cruiser, it would be a month before he would invite me out. On that fateful day I set foot aboard a vessel for the first time in some 20 years. No, the spring of '06 was not my first "float-e-o."

As a young deputy sheriff in La Paz County, AZ, in 1987 I had been only six months removed from the academy when Captain (later Sheriff) Hal Collette put me on the Colorado River patrol boat with Ron (?). I was 20 years old and too young to know how good I had it. After going to SCUBA school, spending 6 months rolling on the river, I stupidly asked to go back to the street.
It would be 20 plus years before I set foot on another boat.