You’ve Said at Least Three of These. Admit It.

There’s a certain dialect spoken only by boaters. It develops somewhere between the dock and the open water, and it flourishes in the moments just before something goes sideways. You know the phrases. You’ve used them yourself. We all have.

“It’ll be fine.”

The universal prelude to a situation that will, definitively, not be fine. Spoken most frequently when staring at a chart, a weather app, or a bilge pump. The confidence behind it is real — and entirely disconnected from available evidence.

“We’ve got enough fuel.”

A classic. Usually delivered while idling away from the last fuel dock for thirty kilometres. The math is always approximate. The consequences are always exact. The good news: this one is usually what generates a phone call to us.

“That noise has always been there.”

It has not always been there. It started sometime in August, you noticed it once, told yourself it was the bilge pump, and filed it under “deal with next weekend.” Engines are not shy. When they start talking, they are trying to tell you something. It is worth listening.

“We’ll deal with that next weekend.”

This phrase has a half-life of approximately four months, at which point it becomes “we’ll deal with that next spring,” and then “we’ll deal with that next season,” and eventually the thing you were going to deal with is the entire reason the boat is sitting at the yard instead of the dock.

“I know exactly where we are.”

Said while holding a phone with 8% battery, no cell service, and a GPS that has been drifting slightly left for the past twenty minutes. The person who says this is almost never the person who knows exactly where they are. The person who knows exactly where they are is checking the chart, not announcing it.

“The weather looks fine from here.”

The operative phrase is “from here.” Weather on the water has different opinions about “from here.” The squall line building twenty kilometres to the west, for instance, is not visible from the cockpit and does not care about your reading of the situation.

We say all of this with great affection, because we are boaters too. We know exactly how these moments happen — because we’ve seen what comes after them. C-Tow membership won’t stop you from saying these things. But it does mean that when the situation that follows demands a response, you’ve already got one.

Because even the most confident boater deserves a backup plan.

c-tow.ca — 1-888-419-2869 — 24/7, coast to coast.