Drake contributor Tim Romano has had a rough year. It started with the tragic river death of his younger sister, Kathryn Walker. And it ended in a car crash that saw the wooden dory he rebuilt and named in her honor smashed to pieces.
“Just before Christmas, I took advantage of some very warm weather and, barring a few cosmetic touches, finished the Katwalk on December 20. I could barely contain my excitement and rounded up my wife and kiddo for the inaugural float on my local bass lake. There was a little bit of open water, and we took her out for a brief 15-minute row. She felt amazing. Much lighter to the touch than I would have expected. She floated like a cork and spun like a top. I was pleased. We pulled her out, put her on the trailer for the mile-and-a-half drive back to my house.
“She never made it home.”
Read More from “The Sad Story of a Boat” via Field & Stream
Tom Bie is the founder, editor, and publisher of The Drake. He started the magazine in 1998 as an annual newsprint publication based in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He then moved it to Steamboat, Colorado (1999), Boulder, Colorado (2001), and San Clemente, California (2004), as he took jobs as managing editor at Paddler, Senior Editor at Skiing, and Editor-in-Chief at Powder, respectively. Tom and The Drake are now both based in Denver, Colorado, where The Drake is finally all grows up(Swingers, 1996) to a quarterly magazine.