Headwind’s new fishing skiff is built by a cult brand whose devotees are, well, devoted to it.

How devoted? Headwind is skeptical.

“If they’re so devoted,why do they take the boats apart, pimp them up their own way, post pix of the changes and brag about them on Facebook, show them off at rallies hundreds of miles from home — and then sell them and find another specimen whose original design and rigging they can’t wait
to violate?”

Headwind said that. If I were giving those cultists equal space, they would counter-denounce him: Not fair!

He doesn’t do what they do because he hasn’t the tools, the skills or the time, especially the time.

“Or the desire, especially the desire. You should have mentioned that first,” he just said, poking me from behind. “If I wanted a boat something like a Gheenoe, I could have found one like that.

“I don’t modify ‘em. I fishify ‘em,” he says every time we talk about this. It’s against journalistic law to let someone you’re writing about see your work before it’s published. It’s totally unacceptable to let him read a work in progress over your shoulder, and interrupt without getting butt-kicked.

Headwind gets away with it only because on his best days he is a little better at this than I am.

Other than that, I grant him license to kibitz because I want him to invite me to be the first member of the Fish or Cut Bait Society to fish as a guest on his new boat, a Gheenoe Super 18.

Headwind bought it new because he couldn’t find a used one sufficiently like the manufacturer’s original build. There were a few specimens on the second/third hand market, but they had been so fully modified by present and previous owners that it would have taken all the skills, tools and time

Headwind doesn’t have to de-and-re-modify them back to their original state.

The original state of Gheenoe boats is Florida. The first one was made in 1970 by Harley W. Gheen, a retired NASA engineer who liked shallow water fishing in a canoe.

He wished for a boat a lot like a canoe, with that very shallow draft, only a lot more stable. You can fish standing up in a canoe, but the way a lot of us cast makes it shaky for the other angler.

I say “other angler” because if your other angler is female — you should be that lucky — it’s imprecise to call her a fisherman and awkward to call her a fisherwoman.

“Angler” is neutral, though not natural. Writing it feels like committing an artifice.

“That is not the point,” Headwind just reminded me. “The point is that if you cast while standing up in a canoe you will probably rock the boat and the other person — angler, shmangler, whatever — will be thrown off balance, possibly overboard. Is this a good spot to slip in a lesson?”

I nodded. Headwind explained that when we cast standing up, we tend to throw our thigh and rear end muscles into the casting stroke, trying for extra power.

Football players are taught to do that when the ball is snapped.

“It’s good for knocking someone down, but you don’t want to knock your fishing partner down,” Headwind went on. “If you’re casting on any sort of rockable boat, your casting arm and shoulder alone should supply the power to both the rearward and forward stroke. No rocking that way. Now go on about Harley Gheen.”

As I was about to say, Gheen thought up a design that was part canoe and part flats skiff. He also wanted it to be inexpensive enough, small enough, light enough and simple enough for someone like Headwind to afford and to handle single-handed if he didn’t have a partner.

He achieved that too, and the little-boat market opened its arms.

In those and earlier days, Florida’s vast coastal shallows inspired many one-off fishing boat improvisations.

A few hit the big time. I suppose a lot of those ideas could have fit into Gheen’s vision if he and the guys who made them had known each other and worked together.

I doubt they were acquainted. Gheen was in Titusville and those others were in Miami and the Keys.

One such was Bob Hewes, whom I mention because I knew him well and his designs also were big successes.

Bob no longer floats and fishes among us but his boats still do, now as part of the Maverick line. His boat and ski store still does business in North Miami.

Jim Martenhoff, who wrote about boating and fishing in The Miami Herald in the 1960s and 70s, contributed ideas to Hewes and other skiff builders with the one he designed and built for himself. He named it Miss Print.

Jim taught me all sorts of useful stuff about boating.

Here’s a direct quote: “Always remember to insert and tighten the drain plug before you launch. Always!”

That was great advice. I hardly ever forget it.

Jim also founded a fishing club that he used as a story-telling framework. He named it the Upper Keys Fish or Cut Bait Society.

Bill Potter, whom I mention because I owned one of his 20-foot SeaCraft boats, was another of those innovators. Potter originals, built in the 1960s, have a cult of their own. My original copy has been acquired and rebuilt by Eddie Hoch, a boating parts and accessories salesman.

I can feel Tiller, who’s chairman of the Fish or Cut Bait Society’s steering committee, reading over my shoulder now.

“I bet a beer you don’t know that Fort Lauderdale eskimos invented the kayak,” he tells Headwind and me.

“What? I say that ain’t so,” Headwind says.

“It ain’t, but I didn’t bet it is. I bet you didn’t know. You didn’t. Now you owe me a beer. You do,” says Tiller.

Headwind pokes me again. “You digress,” he scolds. I think he resents Tiller’s intrusion on his license to butt in.

“It’s just as well Harley Gheen didn’t use any of those other guys’ ideas,” Headwind says, nudging me back on course. “Then he couldn’t properly have named his boat Gheenoe, could he?”

Yes, he couldn’t. It’s also just as well that Gheen’s sons Harley Jr. and Sam joined him in the Gheenoe business. They still build those boats in Titusville.

In these many years they’ve added a few refinements, but every ship of the Gheen line is Dad’s design. The patriarch, 10 years gone now, fished the Super 18 model himself. It’s his longest and widest. Son Sam fishes Dad’s personal copy, with a vintage 50-hp outboard.

Headwind picked the 2024 update of that boat, with a 60-hp outboard. It’s rated for 70.

When he visited the plant in August, he saw Sam’s riggerman fitting out a bright red one with a black 75-hp outboard and a GPS transponder about the length of a man’s forearm. He guessed the owner would need an aviator’s license to use it.

As I type this, Headwind is driving to Titusville to take delivery. Before he left, Tiller asked if his boat is bright red too.

“No, that’s too conspicuous,” Headwind answered. “Mine’s dark olive.” Tiller said he hopes it isn’t the same dark shade of olive as a jalapeño pepper. That looks like a military weapon, and to Tiller it should be. He can’t stand hot peppers.

“It’s a darker shade than jalapeño,” Headwind said, “with a tasteful touch of orange. Pimiento, y’know.”

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