A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN AIRBOAT TOUR GUIDE

By: Glenn Wilsey, Sr.

Recently, I was contacted by a teacher who wanted to know if I would be willing to assist her class with a project that they were working on. The kids were exploring various professions and wanted to know what it’s like to be an airboat tour guide. They sent along a few questions and here’s how I replied.

1. What is it like to ride an airboat? An airboat is nothing more than a big ski with an engine on the back. There are no brakes and no reverse gear, so you must know what you are going to do and where you are going to go long before you do it. The airboat ski’s through the everglades without harming anything in its path. An airboat is a flat bottom boat and as it travels over the sawgrass it flattens the grass but the wind from the propeller blows it right back up. Riding in an airboat feels like you are being pulled behind a boat on a ski but you also get the feeling that you are speeding on snow skis, much like a downhill racer. When the water levels are low in The Everglades, riding in an airboat feels like you are being pulled behind a horse on a sled because now you are going slow and the airboat is bumping your way through the glades.

An airboat is a virtual reality machine. Loud noise including heavy bass combined with vibration, wind, awkward movements, and G forces make you believe the boat is out of control. In reality, however, it’s only an illusion caused by the combined affect of light and shadows and the motion of the boat. The captain is always in control of the airboat and if he or she is good at their art, your airboat tour will be unforgettable. .

2. What would a tourist experience? Tourists experience all of the above and, as a bonus, they are able to experience nature up close and personal. Most ecologists and bio-diversity groups will try to convince you and the rest of the world that our airboat activities terrify the birds and animals and destroy The Everglades. That is not true. We use our airboats to go into The Everglades to see the animals in their natural environment. As we travel down the channel at idle speed, the birds will come to the boats. They are not afraid, they are curious. One of the many birds that come out to the boats is The Purple Gallinule, which is, in my opinion, the most beautiful bird in The Everglades. The gallinules jump into the airboats and will eat out of our hands. Another of my favorites is The Red-winged blackbirds that sometimes fly down and land on my hand. Other birds like The Little Greenback Herons and Great Blue Herons sit on branches close to the water and spear fish with their long beaks as we pass. The tourists just love that. We have about 20 different types of fish in The Everglades and we see many of them as we idle slowly down the channel. Alligators lay on the shoreline as we pass and sometimes they swim close enough to the boats for a really good look. As we continue down the channel we pass through a hardwood hammock. A hardwood hammock is a thick jungle of trees and ferns. Hammock is an Indian word that means land above water or garden place. It is just one of the things you see on an airboat tour that makes a good tour so unforgettable.

3. What are the safety measures? An airboat tour is very safe. Like other commercial vessels, we carry life-vests and other flotation devices, a fire extinguisher and a first aid kit. The boat might break down, or we could get stuck in the mud during times when the water is low but we carry cellular phones so that if anything happens we can call and help is on the way.

4. What is a typical day like for an airboat tour guide? At Gator Park Airboat Tours, we work as a team and help each other to do our jobs. As a tour guide, I start my day by checking out the boats before pulling them on line. I check the oil levels, look the engines over for anything that might be lose and make sure the boats are clean. All of the guides at Gator Park live at Gator Park so we do everything. That means we sometimes have to cook in the restaurant, clean, mow the lawn or do anything it takes to keep Gator Park looking beautiful and running smoothly. Some of the tour guides, myself included, also wrestle alligators but we all work very hard to make a visit to The Everglades memorable. Taking nice people into The Everglades is what we live to do. It feels good when someone tells me that they had a great time and that they learned something. At the end of each day we check all of the Boats, park them for the night, clean up the park and go home, but home is Gator Park. If you’d like to know what tour guides do when they are not working, well they get on their personal airboats and play in The Everglades. It is so beautiful out here that we just can’t get enough.

5. What are the benefits of your job? This is an easy question. I enjoy meeting new people and I love the look on the tourist’s faces when a bird jumps on the airboat or when an alligator swims too close. I really enjoy a tour group that asks a lot of questions. I get a great deal of satisfaction from teaching tourists from all over the world about the facts and folklore of The Everglades. I’m not a scientist so I don’t spend a lot of time on the scientific explanations. I prefer to teach the folklore. It’s all about our past. I work outdoors in beautiful weather and I have a great view from my office, that changes every day.

6. What are the drawbacks of your job? That’s another easy question. MONEY!!! Tour guides will not get rich by being tour guides, however, I think my answer to question #5 explains well enough why we do what we do. These questions and my answers to them will be printed in a new social studies book for fourth graders in Florida’s public schools. These questions will help them understand why people choose the jobs that they do. I would like to thank Ms. Frances Courtney (Teacher and writer) and her students for helping me with choosing my story for this month. If you have any questions about the everglades or the animals, please feel free to ask me. I can be reached by e-mail to: Gatorman1@aaof.us. I answer my e-mails within 24 hours. There are times, however, when a question is so outstanding that I have to answer the question with a story. THANKS AND ALWAYS REMEMBER, NATURE RULES!!!!!!!!!!

Sincerely: Glenn W. Wilsey Sr. (GATORMAN)

*This story or any part of it can not be used or reproduced with out written permission of the author!