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Bill
Koeppel couldn’t understand why his boat suddenly lost speed.
It was
a beautiful summer day, during a cruise with friends on Long Island Sound,
when Sahara, his 46-foot Hatteras, nearly ground to a halt. Koeppel
checked the controls at his fingertips and, after seeing them still forward,
was mystified. Then just as inexplicably, Sahara sped up again.
What the heck was going on? Koeppel dashed down the flying-bridge ladder
to check things out below decks.
No sooner
did his feet touch the cockpit than he discovered the problem. There,
at the aft-deck controls, stood six-year-old Andrew Giuliani, son of then-mayoral-hopeful
Rudy Giuliani of New York, gleefully pulling and pushing the levers like
joysticks on a video game.
Even
though the incident occurred more than a decade ago, Koeppel remembers
it as if it were just yesterday. For it was the moment this lifelong boater
realized he’d have to completely re-evaluate his 46-footer from
a safety standpoint when it came time to raise his own family of boaters.
And
re-evaluating he is. Koeppel and his wife Jean welcomed a son, Harrison,
into the world two years ago. Ever since, this New Yorker and a yardful
of craftsmen who are dads themselves have been refitting Sahara
to accommodate his child’s needs, as well as those of him and his
wife as parents. Note the word refitting—he’s not just throwing
on a sturdy-plastic cabinet latch here and a knob cover there. Rather,
he and the other boater-dads are devising installations and adaptations
that complement Sahara’s traditional nautical appeal.
It’s
a good thing Koeppel began thinking about this well in advance, because
Harrison came close to being born onboard. Three weeks before Jean’s
due date, the couple was peacefully sleeping aboard at the Sag Harbor
Yacht Club when she went into labor. Luckily an ambulance arrived in time
to take her to a nearby hospital, but the couple realized they somehow
had to get Harrison and the boat, which they berth in Stamford, Connecticut,
home. When Jean asked the doctor how early a baby could be taken aboard
a boat, he echoed the conclusion they’d already come to: Considering
how they’d arrived in town, they’d have to return home the same
way, giving Harrison an extra-early introduction to the lifestyle. So
Koeppel picked up an infant’s car seat at a local store, and the
new parents carefully made their way back to Stamford.
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