POWERED PLEASURE

WHEN blue water widens between hull and dock, the frayed world brightens for the boatman. All roads ashore may lead toward Miltown, but the buoyant water works its own tranquilizing magic. Never since the day some primitive yachtsman learned to balance a floating log have boating buffs pursued their pleasure with such elegance and ease. From agile outboard runabout to stately, seagoing cruiser (see color spread), today's powered craft are designed for comfort.

There are still stubborn sailors at docks and yacht-club bars who sneer at "the stinkpots" and curse the day that chrome comforts began to crowd out the stern delights of cruising under canvas. But the onrush of powerboating was inevitable after World War II. Weekend sailors came home to find that battle-tested boat-building skills were already turning out the kind of craft that millions of Americans had always wanted. Men who had no taste for the tangle of a sailboat's rigging and no patience with the vagaries of wind and tide discovered that there were powerboats to fit their pocketbooks. Outboards that had been beefed up to handle hefty assault boats became fine engines for modest cruisers; plastics, Plexiglas and molded plywood went into hulls that took a minimum of care. All of a sudden boating was almost all fun.

Families Afloat. Today boating is the No. 1 U.S. family sport. Last year some 28 million Americans spent more than $1.25 billion on a U.S. pleasure-boat fleet of more than 6,000,000. More than three-quarters of those boats are outboards. Only 9% are sailboats without inboard auxiliaries (and many of these carry small outbpards). Waterways that hold little attraction for the sailor--from the Florida Keys to the current-ridden reaches of the inland rivers--now swarm with powerboats. Middlewestern barns many miles from the nearest navigable lake make fine boathouses for light "amphibious" cruisers and their uncomplicated trailers.

With so many families on the water, providing places for them to berth has become a business in itself. New marinas have opened everywhere. The 10,000 docks that claim the fancy name range all the way from shoreside gas-pump and comfort stations to fine public moorings and swank "boatels" boasting restaurants, swimming pools, grocery stores and water and electricity at every slip. When the big boating boom started, the casual voyager could find hardly more than 100 marinas worth visiting.

The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary and the U.S. Power Squadrons have teamed together, and in 211 cities, inland as well as seaside, teach the new weekend navy the intricacies of navigation and pilotage in meticulously planned courses. Predicted Log races (which pay off on all-round seamanship, not speed) provide competition for the powerboatman who wants to test his talents. More and more fishermen are taking their own sea-kindly craft far offshore.

Tensions Ashore. Salty old sailors may still grumble about a powerboat's wake as it washes through a crowded anchorage, but powerboatmen no longer suffer from a sense of inferiority;, they have learned to snarl back at "canvas hoisters." The only ones who cause any real trouble are the "hot-rodders," speed-happy delinquents, both inboard and outboard, who assault the peace and risk others' lives and limbs when they cut loose.

Neither sail nor power has room for the hot-rodders. When a real boatman casts off,, he wants to leave his anxieties behind for a long day's cruise and a quiet cove, where the anchor goes down and the cocktail flag flaps from a yardarm. Having tasted such pleasure only a landlubber would prefer the tensions of Saturday jukeboxes and Sunday traffic ashore.

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