Walking into Three Fishermen Restaurant in North Fort Myers, Fla., I overheard a small group of folks in matching poker-run jerseys snarking about an orange Nor-Tech 390 Sport center console with 14 folks on board clad in orange T-shirts. Now, I wouldn’t be caught dead in any shirt color-matched to any boat no matter how insistent the owner. First, just no. Make that hell no.
And second, it doesn’t help me do my job. We have a wonderful assortment of speedonthewater.com-branded apparel and that, too, I never wear. My job is not to stand out and be noticed. Reporting and marketing are two different things, and when I report my goal is to disappear as best I can and experience the event I’m covering.
Still, the folks in loud poker-run jerseys guffawing at the folks in orange T-shirts amused me.
Both fashion statements—a liberal application of the term, I’ll grant you—scream nothing but enthusiasm. So at every go-boating event I cover, I don’t see just people dressed in stuff I probably wouldn’t clean my mountain-bike chain with. Instead I see passion. And I appreciate it.
Minus passion, high-performance boating doesn’t exist. It’s an expensive, labor-intensive, time-sucking hobby. If you don’t love it, you leave it.
So power to the Orange Man Group, led by Nor-Tech 390 owner Jerald Ignash, who happens to be ordering a new Nor-Tech 4000 Roadster catamaran. I don’t know what color the shirts will be, but I already appreciate them.—Matt Trulio
