[HEIRLOOM TECHNOLOGY TOTCH BROWN’S] PIT PAN

GATOR BOAT

By Tim Anderson

START YOUR BOAT-BUILDING HOBBY BY
BUILDING THIS ONE.

L oren “Totch” Brown lived in the Thousand Islands region of the Everglades his whole life. His fascinating autobiography, Totch, A Life in the Everglades ( University of Florida Press, 1993), relates his adventures, and its cover depicts him propelling a strange little boat with a push pole.

It’s called a “pit pan” and is now on display at work hard. If you want a boat you can take a nap Smallwood’s store in Chokoloskee, Fla. (florida- in, you need something like this. everglades.com/chokol/smallw.htm). Rolled up in the bottom of the boat is Totch’s

When the water was too deep for the push pole, mosquito net or “skeeter bar,” so named he used a paddle, and when the water was too shal- because it’s where the insects go to drink and low, he dragged or carried it. socialize. It’s a rectangular mosquito net just big

He made many such boats for hunting alligators enough to not touch the person sleeping under over the years. Despite its crude appearance, this is it. In the old days, gauze, cheesecloth, or any a very elegant boat. It is burdened with no unneces- open weave fabric was used. The net is held up sary features. You can carry it and you can sleep in at the corners by sticks. If it rains, a tarp just big it. That makes it a magic carpet to freedom. enough to keep the rain off goes over that.

In designing boats, people get hung up about the A boat can be part swan, part guitar. This boat speed of the boat rather than the speed of building is a box with no lid. Start your boat-building the boat, and they forget that to go fast you have to hobby by building this one.