Airboat Wars

Yuppies vs. crackers in high-decibel showdown

By Wes Smith
Sentinel National Correspondent

June 26, 2005

McINTOSH -- Great blue herons launch out of tall grass, and fierce gators scatter like barnyard hens as frog hunter Allen "Cajun" Perry roars through the backwaters of Orange Lake south of Gainesville.

"It's beautiful out here. That's why I'd rather be on my airboat than doing anything else," says Perry, 68, who supplements his Social Security by gigging and selling leopard frogs by the pound.

The rugged retired welder with a white Fu Manchu mustache covets the solitude of north-central Florida's remote wetlands. But in recent weeks Perry has left the lake time and again to defend airboating, which he considers "a part of Florida," from its increasingly vocal critics.

Perry and other airboaters throughout the state are concerned that their way of life is threatened by a growing contingent of hard-drinking, hard-driving recreational riders whose earsplitting antics are provoking homeowners and lawmakers.

"The problem isn't guys like Cajun who do it as a way of life. It's the rich yuppies buying high-performance $50,000 airboats so they can pump them full of gas and drink on the lake all weekend," said Robbie Shidner, owner of South Shore Fish Camp in Citra.

Shidner, who owns a 12-passenger airboat, recently banned from his camp an airboater who came thundering in at 11 p.m.

"They aren't members of clubs or people making a living. They are jerks who don't know any boating etiquette," he said.

State of airboats

Florida's backwater hunters and fishermen were among the first to fit airplane-type propellers aboard flat-bottom boats so they could glide through the state's shallowest marshes, bogs and swamps. But like Harley-Davidson motorcycles ridden by CEOs and CPAs, airboats are moving upstream and enjoying wider popularity.

There are now at least 23 airboating clubs in the state and about 40 nationwide. Members typically range from those who build their own airboats out of spare parts for less than $2,000 to others who spend $30,000 or more for state-of-the-art showboats, according to Airboat World magazine Editor Terri Latner in Ocala.

"Everybody thinks airboaters are a bunch of low-class, redneck people, but that's not the case anymore. In our club alone we have three attorneys," noted Bob Hoover Jr., president of the Citrus County Airboat Alliance, which has 175 family memberships.

"It's not cheap either," he added. "If you want to buy a new boat, you'll start about $18,000, and at $3.75 a gallon for aviation gas, you can blow $100 in a weekend real fast."

GTO Performance Airboats in Ocala, which has annual sales of nearly $10 million and a new assembly plant, offers a wide range of airboats and can cater to more affluent customers with customized models for as much as $80,000, salesman Keith Sherouse said.

There are now at least 15 major airboat manufacturers in Florida. Most will add any bell or whistle desired -- including elaborate stereo and navigation systems, live-bait tanks, microwaves or built-in coolers -- for affluent airboaters slumming in the swamp.

Somewhere amid the traditional and newer airboaters are the troublemakers who race full-bore day and night without a thought to the racket they raise, grouse critics, who are no longer restricted to crotchety snowbirds who've raised noise issues in the past after moving onto waterfront sites.

"I'm as much a Cracker as anyone, but the airboat noise has gotten worse. Some of it's because other places have tightened up regulations on them, so they're moving here," said Fred Wood, 67, owner of the 113-year-old Wood & Swink General Store in Evinston near Orange Lake.

Trudy Dickinson, 74, of Lake Panasoffkee, south of Inverness, created a Web site, noairboatnoise .com, after airboats racing on the Withlacoochee River caused her blood pressure to rise to dangerous levels.

"This type of unmuffled noise isn't just an annoyance or a threat to your ears," the retired teacher said. "The sound vibrations at those decibels affect the entire body."

Sound travels

Airboat-noise complaints, like those about personal watercraft, have followed population growth and the increased development in waterfront areas from South Florida up the peninsula into the center of the state, said Richard Moore, boating-law administrator for the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

"It has become more of a vocal issue and something we need to look at real hard and get good data on," said Moore, overseer of an airboat-noise study by Florida Atlantic University engineers scheduled to be completed this week.

Though most airboats have no mufflers, Florida law requires that all vessels be "reasonably muffled." State statute also allows counties to limit vessel noise to 90 decibels at 50 feet, but only a handful have chosen to do so, in part because it's difficult to enforce.

As a result, a hodgepodge of regulations has been imposed. Some counties, towns and neighborhoods have airboat curfews, bans, no-wake zones or mandatory-muffler ordinances, while many others have no restrictions at all.

No fans

Growing protests even in less-populated areas such as weed-choked Orange Lake, long a haven for airboaters, have ignited calls for more-uniform regulations and tougher enforcement.

Alachua County commissioners recently agreed to hire a consultant to study airboat noise. That county's most vocal airboating opponent -- in both word and song -- is Richard "Whitey" Markle, 60, a craggy woodshop lab instructor at the University of Florida who is also the leader of the Swamprooters, a folk-bluegrass band.

Markle, whose "Cracker tropical" wood-frame home sits amid his chicken coops and towering live oaks 150 feet off Orange Lake, said airboats running in the wee hours of the morning rattle his bed, ruin his sleep and, worse, interfere with his music-making.

"They are out of control, and their recreational noise is polluting my bedroom," he said. "If I'm trying to play bluegrass, and the airboats are in C sharp and I'm in D, it don't work."

Still, during a lull in the clamor, Markle managed to pen a protest tune, "Song of the Lake."

"It tells airboaters that they need to shut their engines off and listen to the critters -- the osprey, the blackbirds and hawks -- to hear the true song of the lake," said Markle, who also authored a UF master's thesis in urban planning titled Airboat Noise around Orange Lake Fla. as a Community Planning Issue.

Alachua County Sheriff Steve Oelrich, who lives across the 12,706-acre lake from Markle, said his deputies will be writing citations, not folk songs, if airboaters don't throttle back.

"The majority are out on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, and it's real, real loud. I can hear them not only on Orange Lake but also on Lochloosa Lake three or more miles away," said Oelrich, who has proposed parking an airboat outside the County Commission office in Gainesville and revving the engines to make his point loud and clear.

To the south, Marion County adopted the 90-decibels-at-50-feet statute three years ago. But Citrus County commissioners voted last month to postpone new restrictions on airboats pending the FAU study -- vexing 263 Arbor Lakes residents who signed a petition seeking noise relief.

A baffling problem

At the request of legislators, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission ordered the FAU study. After it's done, the commission will need several months to review it and decide what to do about its recommendations, Moore said.

In the meantime, concerned airboating clubs in the state are conducting their own campaigns to fend off tight restrictions, curfews or bans. Most are urging club members to voluntarily muffle their engines and keep it to a low roar near populated shorelines.

"We are trying to teach courtesy, and we are slowly getting through the ranks of our clubs and others," said Hoover, the airboat-club leader. "It's a matter of changing habits."

Nearly all airboaters don earplugs or other gear to protect their own hearing, but that practice may also make them less aware of the uproar their craft create, critics say.

True to his independent nature, "Cajun" Perry has his own unique approach for tuning out the earsplitting din aboard his homemade boat.

On a recent airboat tour, the McIntosh frogger thoughtfully provided protective ear guards to two passengers. But he had no headset for himself.

Instead, just before cranking his souped-up 220-horsepower aircraft engine, Perry plucked out first one of his hearing aids, and then the other.

"I lost my hearing because of welding -- years before I started airboating," he insisted.

Wes Smith can be reached at 407-420-5672 or dwsmith@orlandosentinel.com.

Family-oriented, civic-minded, environmentally concerned airboaters!

Citrus County Airboat Alliance
P.O. Box 194, Inverness, FL 34453
www.citrusairboat.org

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