“I took pictures of the wake we were making going through the river, and I took pictures of one of the guys kind of coming along, he was pushing a bigger wake... I thought, ‘we’re going to get flagged for that.’”
-Bill Jennings on the charity poker run in August on Lake Muskoka
SOUTH MUSKOKA -- Bill Jennings is incredulous as he and Bob Barnhart slowly idle through through The Narrows, a 9-kilometre-per-hour no-wake cut that separates Muskoka Bay from the main body of Lake Muskoka.
A boater is coming toward them, pulling two kids on a tube behind his large boat.
“He’s not going to go through towing, is he?” Jennings asks.
But the answer’s already clear.
Jennings signals to the boat’s driver. The driver takes no heed and continues on his way, creating a large wake.
Jennings shakes his head.
“Unbelievable,” he says.
Jennings is no stranger to controversial boating practices. He participated in last month’s Performance Boat Club of Canada charity poker run on the Muskoka Lakes, an annual event which raised $7,500 for the Tim Hortons Children’s Foundation and revved up all sorts of controversy in Muskoka in the process.
Some cottagers are up-in-arms over the event, saying it causes unnecessary disruption with little warning.
“Not only is it an environmental hazard with respect to the huge amount of boat wake and shoreline erosion it creates, but it creates a deafening noise that drowns out all conversation and relaxation that we all come up to cottage country to enjoy,” Ann Wyganowski, a Lake Joseph cottager, told the Bracebridge Examiner.
Jennings, a Port Carling resident, argues that the poker run is generally no more disruptive than the often-heavy boat traffic on the Muskoka Lakes. And it’s considerably safer than towing a tube through The Narrows.
Modern performance boating
Performance boating has been around for a long time, but its modern incarnation is often traced to 1959, when Don Aronow moved to South Florida.
“He and some of his cronies lived a very high life, would race in the annual Miami-to-Nassau race,” Jennings said. “And inevitably, it was the boat that survived that won.”
With millions that he’d earned from his New Jersey construction business, Aronow began to design and build boats to quench his insatiable need for speed.
He’d build up a company, sell it off, and start a new one. The brands he created live on today: Formula, Magnum, Cigarette and Donzi.
Jennings raced professionally for three years in Florida, and got to meet several of the characters involved in the development of performance boating.
“Frankly, it was pretty scary,” Jennings said. “Some of these guys, because of these boats and because of the times, they were continuously tapped on to provide drug boats.”
Aronow’s fast-living eventually caught up to him. He had provided boats for government agencies such as the DEA, as well as suspected drug-runners (from all accounts, Aronow took a ‘see-no-evil’ approach to his clientele.) Aronow was gunned down in Feb. 1987. And though he’s gone, his legacy lives on in the form of modern performance boating.
Riding the waves
On a sunny Friday afternoon, Bob Barnhart pilots his Formula-brand boat from Port Carling to Gravenhurst.
The boat is an impressive machine. At nearly 75 miles per hour (120 km/h), it effortlessly flits across the water of Lake Muskoka.
“You’ll feel, it’s pretty smooth in the water, huh?” Barnhart says.
Indeed. The 15 km/h wind is whipping up the lake, but the boat handles the chop easily.
The vessel’s deep-v hull allows Barnhart, a Poker Runs USA Hall of Famer, to turn on a dime.
The ride is stable and perhaps most surprisingly, relatively quiet: certainly no noisier than several of the antique and modern cruisers that Barnhart and Jennings encounter on this day.
And yes, it’s fast. The trip from Port Carling to Gravenhurst takes 26 minutes.
The power with which the wind hits a rider’s face is the main indication of the boat’s speed, an effect that’s subdued by sliding below the windshield line.
But Barnhart, like Jennings, isn’t some yahoo out for a joyride. He and Jennings have a lifetime of experience piloting high-performance vessels.
And Jennings has established rigorous boating safety programs for various organizations in Canada and The United States.
“No easy answer”
Jennings believes that local concerns about the poker run boil down to a few key issues.
“I think that the objection about these boats is people driving in an inconsiderate manner, and having them over a certain decibel level that we’re accustomed to in Muskoka,” he said. “If those two situations were addressed, I don’t think that people would complain if the boats were a hundred feet long.”
While Jennings says there is “no easy answer,” he acknowledges that the boat club must work with concerned cottagers to find some common ground. In fact, he places some blame on performance boat owners who insist on loud engines despite technology to negate the noise.
“Impress people on how you dock the boat, not how loud you are,” he said, adding that there are muffler systems on the market that can reduce the sound of a 500-hp engine to virtually nothing.
But Jennings also points out that while boaters registered in the poker run are given specific instructions in terms of speed and respect for no-wake areas, the event is marred by “tagalong” local boaters who drive with the crowd, without registration – and in his eyes, without respect for the rules of the poker run.
“I took pictures of the wake we were making going through the river, and I took pictures of one of the guys kind of coming along, he was pushing a bigger wake,” Jennings said. “I thought, ‘we’re going to get flagged for that.’”
Still, the reaction is generally positive on the lakes, according to Jennings.
“We got more of this,” Jennings says, smiling and pointing his thumb upwards, “than this,” he says as he gestures with his middle finger.