THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 27, 1996 TAG: 9604270044
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
DAN KILTY sat in a chair watching the sun wink off the molasses-dark water of the Intracoastal Waterway, looking like Spencer Tracy doing the old man from ``The Old Man and the Sea.''
Old jeans, old T-shirt, old sneakers. Worn hands, sunburned skin, gray beard.
He had parked his 50-foot trawler - the Why Not? - and himself at the Atlantic Yacht Basin in Chesapeake, intending to throw his life into reverse gear.
He's been at sea off and on for the past 20 years. And when he's not aboard his own vessel, he roams the four corners of the earth teaching courses for the University of Maryland's overseas educational program.
He knows the Pyramids the way a young child knows the blocks with ABCs printed on them. He knows the best coffeehouse in Vienna, the best library in England. And the best pub in Dublin - for conversation that sparkles like a crystal shot glass.
Around the yacht basin he's known as ``the professor.'' He has a doctorate in economics, international business and government from the University of Maryland.
The professor, 64, now wants to trade the trawler, which has been his home, for a recreational vehicle.
``I've been everywhere you can imagine on this planet, and I've concluded that this is the best country on earth,'' he said. ``If that sounds chauvinistic, so be it.
``My problem is that I know what both sides of this country look like, because I've been to ports up and down the coasts. But I know nothing of the center because you can't get there by boat. I want to know the middle.''
It seems he's doing everything in reverse. Folks his age usually get the gold watch after having punched a clock at the office for 30 years. And the first thing they want to do, if they've saved money, is look at the rest of the world.
Not Kilty.
He wants to tour places with names like Broken Bow, Table Mountain, Shiprock, Gallup, Albuquerque. He wants to eat a taco in El Paso. And maybe go ice fishing in Minnesota.
``I certainly want to see the Grand Canyon,'' he said. ``They flooded it recently, you know.''
The professor, who lives alone on his trawler, is so feisty it's hard to imagine him with a good Good Neighbor Sam bumper sticker on his RV.
``Tell me a good story, Professor,'' I asked.
He stared straight ahead, toward a kayaker paddling up the Waterway, his yellow paddle blades splashing through the water like duck feet.
``It's my nickel. I don't have to tell you a damn thing,'' he said, his eyes cutting toward me, gauging the effect, before his lips split with laughter.
Kilty's been in love with the water since he was a boy rowing a boat on the Connecticut River. His son is a chief pilot on the river now, a graduate of the Maine Maritime Academy.
``What we're doing to the water is criminal,'' he said. ``Dumping everything into it. My son says he sees refuse up and down the Connecticut River. People even dump their refrigerators there. Imagine it.''
His trawler is a wooden-hulled, surplus Navy launch he picked up in Norfolk in 1970. He worked on it over several summers, adding a cabin and Bertha.
``Bertha's the name I gave the engine,'' he explained. ``She has 225 horsepower and weighs 3,000 pounds.'' The Why Not? is a utility boat, perfect for salvage work, Kilty claims. She sleeps six and is loaded with electronic gear.
But a yacht she ain't. The bunks appear to have been stolen from a prison farm. And the only brightwork aboard the vessel is the boat's varnished nameplate on the stern - made by his daughter, who is getting her doctorate at Boston University.
Kilty intends to give the Why Not? away for $18,000 or a good recreational vehicle suitable for touring the U.S. interior.
As he sat there, I could imagine the professor in the Southwest, seated in a chair on the rim of a cloud-shadowed, cactus-studded canyon. Looking like a native, too, in his prospector's hat and ragged shirt.
But for now, there he sat beside the Intracoastal Waterway, eyes gazing at the water. Waiting for his RV to come in. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by BILL TIERNAN, The Virginian-Pilot
Dan Kilty intends to give away his trawler, the Why Not?, for
$18,000 or a good recreational vehicle.
by CNB