Canadian Yachting February 2023 - 82

CROSSING THE LINE
BOATING IS GREAT FOR SEX DRIVE
By | John Morris
A note to readers - Behind the scenes at CTL. In a small corner
on the 31st floor of the CY Media Tower in downtown Midland
Ontario, the Crossing the Line Team works tirelessly in well-deserved
obscurity. We felt this was an opportunity for our audience
to get to know these ne'ers-do-well who bring so much to
the pages of this otherwise fine magazine.
Senior researcher, Ray Winch, is perhaps best known for
becoming the first person to water-ski the Northwest Passage.
The most famous picture, of course, was taken when the Sea Ray
driver misinterpreted Ray's hand signal and his Level 15 360
landed him atop a curious polar bear. Incidentally, the Speedo
Ray wore on the western section of the journey still hangs proudly
in the Northern Frostbite Museum in Frobisher Bay where it is
the centrepiece of many school visits.
While our nutritionist contributor Marsha Campion (no relation
to the boat brand, just an unhappy coincidence) was unsuccessful
with her recipe book for Trawler captains " Cooking with
Diesel " , she did achieve considerable attention on Canada's
Baking Marathon when she recreated the historic Bluenose II in
a multi-layer torte that unfortunately flew to pieces in a 20-knot
wind designed to demonstrate the design's authenticity.
Writer, John Morris, has extraordinary depth as both a boater
and a journalist. As a child he admired Miss Supertest III, the
Canadian hydroplane that roundly defeated the US entry to win
the Harmsworth Trophy three years in a row from 1959-61. Upon
discovering that the sponson structure was fabricated of Sitka
Spruce, John hitchhiked to BC where he felled a spruce, hand
milled it himself then loaded the planks on his bicycle to take
them back to Sarnia stopping to pick up the surplus Rolls Royce
engine that had contributed to Canadian racing boat superiority
on the water.
Soon after, John undertook to earn the Thunderbird 26 a berth
in Olympic Sailing Competition. After petitioning the IOC on
nine occasions prior to the 1968 Mexico Games, he disguised
his T-Bird as a Soling achieving a remarkable 2nd place finish,
which stands to this day as a record for fraudulently entered
three-person boats.
Perhaps his finest hour as a boater was when he dipped the
anchor of his Carver 354 cruiser in the Bay of Fundy having
completed a Cross Canada Portage to show that dry land is no
impediment to boating.
Undoubtedly a most impressive recent achievement, his collection
of essays " Boating is great for Sex Drive " was awarded
both the Nobel Prize for Journalism and Chile's National Prize
for Medicine just last year.
THE STUDY:
With boat show season upon us, it's time to take a look at
the important Canadian Work-Avoidance Lifestyle Survey, an
authoritative study jointly sponsored by Crossing the Line and
the Couch Potato Institute.
As you well know, this winter virtually all Canadians have
occupied their non-working hours making handcrafted charcuterie
boards. But spring is coming, so it's important to take a
look at how boating stacks up compared to other leisure pursuits.
In an exhaustive survey, the study's authors went boating all
last summer, but also played more than 1,000 rounds of miniature
golf. After extensive analysis of the data, the team concluded
that, beyond the small windmill on the 11th hole of Ed's Crazy
Golf in Port Dover, ON, there was little comparison between the
two pastimes.
82 CANADIAN YACHTING | FEBRUARY 2023
Canadian Yachting February 2023

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