"Where else are you going to go to get a summer place on the water for this cost?" asks Ray Robbio.

01:16 PM EDT on Monday, July 3, 2006

BY TOM MOONEY
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Primitive man is said to have enjoyed using boats during the Stone Age. Ray Robbio, lounging in the stern of his inboard at the Port Edgewood Marina, dates his personal appreciation for them to July 4, 2001.

Journal photo / Bob Thayer

In his 24-foot Stingray docked at Port Edgewood Marina in Cranston, Ray Robbio of Coventry says having a boat is like having a waterfront home, only a whole lot cheaper.

Before then, he and his wife, Cheryl, married now 28 years, spent summers taking in the sights of Rhode Island by land. But that night the couple rode a ferry to Newport to watch the fireworks. Under a rain of crackling lights, they marveled at all those silhouetted boats anchored in the harbor.

How much fun -- how independent -- it must feel, Ray thought, to spend a balmy evening swaying gently under an expansive sky.

Ray and Cheryl Robbio, parents of four, grandparents of eight, had rarely been aboard a boat before. But soon after that summer holiday they found themselves on the showroom floor at South Attleboro Marine.

"We went in there just to look around," says Ray, 62, a retired General Electric technician who drove over to his boat on this morning after days of rain to make sure the interior hadn't gotten wet. Now he lingered in the sunshine. "I mean, I knew nothing about boats except that they floated on the water. But Al -- the owner up there -- made it easy. Whatever objection you put up, he had an answer."

The Robbios lived in Coventry and had no place to put a boat.

Not a problem, Al Addessi told them. He'd get them a slip at Port Edgewood.

The Robbios had no way of towing a boat.

We'll drop it in the water for you, said Al.

The Robbios gravitated toward a new 19-foot Stingray with a four-cylinder outboard engine, selling for $14,500. Al offered a sweet loan arrangement. And of course, he said, as Rhode Island residents there would be no sales tax.

"You couldn't walk away," says Ray.

The Robbios did. For a time. They drove a mile down Route 1 to Applebees to discuss venturing into a world they had never considered entering before. The adventurous side of Ray won out: Other people buy boats. People love boats. We may, too.

By the time they had finished their meal, they knew they had become boat owners, an experience shared this year with 40,553 other registered boat owners in Rhode Island.

South Attleboro Marine sent a mechanic along with the Robbios' Stingray to Port Edgewood. He showed Ray how to drive his boat, how to back it up and slide it into a slip at the marina.

Ray took the wheel. "It felt like the last frontier out there," he says. "There's no traffic, no lights. The government is out of it for the most part," though both Ray and Cheryl attended the 10-week safe boating course offered by the Coast Guard.

Tentative at first, the Robbios stayed within the confines of the Upper Bay. But gradually they ventured farther south, beyond Conimicut Light, in Warwick, where the Bay starts to open up.

Waves rolled beneath their bow.

Ray Robbio smiled.

A greenhorn on this new frontier, Ray didn't know what to do for fun accept "drive around in circles."

"Oh, man, you get out there and everything looks alike," he says. "Every island looks like another. I didn't know where I was going."

So they asked around the marina. Where do people go? What's with all these mooring balls you see everywhere?

Soon they were packing lunches and motoring down to Prudence Island on Saturdays. They passed the days in the sun, listening to nice music on the radio and taking dips in the warm water.

And then as their second boat season, summer 2002, waned, Ray came down with a common ailment among boaters.

Suddenly his 19-foot, white-hulled Stingray felt . . . well, small.

He noticed that sometimes when they traveled down to Newport, the waters would get rough and their little boat splashed around like a cork. Cheryl didn't like getting wet.

They went to see Al Addessi again up at South Attleboro Marine.

"I'm just curious," Ray began. . . .

In short time, the Robbios' new boat replaced the old at Port Edgewood.

Al couldn't have been nicer, Ray explains; "He gave us every penny back for the old boat."

In return, the Robbios bought a brand new 24-foot Stingray with a V8 inboard motor and a small cabin with room to sleep two, a toilet and a cooler. The cost was more than double the old boat: $34,000.

The new Stingray has a 68-gallon gas tank and burns about 8 gallons of gasoline an hour. With fuel costing $3.56 a gallon at the marina, says Ray, a fill-up costs him about $242, though he tries never to have less than half a tank.

Ray has customized his boat, adding a second battery as a precaution, installing a 120-volt converter so he can run a few more electronics, and purchasing a Global Positioning System to keep him off the sandbars after a couple of grinding stops off Goddard Park.

"I've learned my lesson about those [channel] buoys."

He's also learned another lesson about boat ownership. When you start adding up the fuel cost, the $1,850 seasonal marina fee, the $250 to truck the boat to the water and back home and all the other incidentals: "They are sinkholes for money."

"There are times when I grumble about things like how much it cost for fuel. But I wouldn't trade it for anything. Where else are you going to go to get a summer place on the water for this cost?"

The best part? "When my wife and I are out at sunset, going about 5 mph and the light is kind of glinting off the water and it's as smooth as a pond. It is just beautiful. It makes it all worth it."

Ray Robbio drives school buses now for East Greenwich, "which is nice because I get laid off for the summer and get a chance to do this."

Cheryl works part time at a dry cleaners and a pharmacy. Today she gets out at 2 p.m. If the weather holds, which so far this season it hasn't, Ray says she may meet him down here by the water and "we'll take a little ride."

Their first ride of the season.

Specifications

Stingray 240CS

Length: 23 feet, 6 inches

Beam: 8 feet, 6 inches

Sleeps: 4

Engine: V8 inboard, Gasoline: 68 gallon capacity

Purchased: 2002

Cost: $34,000

Best boating moment: Watching the sun set over the water with his wife, Cheryl, says Ray Robbio.

Worst boating moment: Maiden voyage. Ray attempts to follow another boater to Conimicut Point in 5-foot waves. Ray loses visual contact. Cheryl retreats into the cabin. Emerging later, she says: "We won't do that again."

tmooney@projo.com / (401) 277-7359