The Folly Boat

One of the ‘main characters’ of my most recent novel, Savannah Grace, is a boat. Not just any boat, mind you, but a very special boat affectionately known as the Folly Boat.

Anyone who has traveled to Folly Beach, South Carolina in recent years has more than likely seen the boat. It sits on a narrow shoulder of land just past the Piggly Wiggly, bordered by marshland on one side and a two-laned highway (Folly Road) on the other. If you’re driving down Folly Road you can’t help but notice the dogone thing since it will undoubtedly have a  brightly painted message written across its hull—a message that changes daily, if not hourly.

So how did all this get started? And why is the boat there in the first place? Glad you asked. Stand by to be enlightened.

The boat, about thirty feet in length, washed up alongside the road in 1989 during Hurricane Hugo. No one ever claimed it, so the locals decided to adopt it and make it a shrine to the storm. I suppose it was their way of saying, "You might have destroyed our houses and reeked havoc on our little island, Hugo, but we will survive just like this boat did.”

It didn’t take long for someone to get the bright idea to take a spray gun to the boat and paint a message across its hull, visible to all the traffic going up and down Folly Road. The idea caught on quick, and before long a different message could be found on the boat each day, mostly happy birthday wishes and spouses exposing their love of their better half on  wedding anniversaries. In fact, on summer weekends, it's not uncommon for a message to last just a few hours before someone else comes along and paints a new one. But woe to anyone who tries to paint a commercial message on the boat. If you do, the good folks on Folly will hunt you down and pour a gallon of whitewash paint over your head, then hand you another gallon and politely ask you to cover the message, pronto. It’s for anniversaries, birthdays, and ‘welcome homes’, and not to be used for profit. To do so would be an insult to the spirit of the boat.

Anyway, all this got me to thinking one day, and this little light bulb appeared above my head that whispered to me, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a cool story plot if one of your characters found threatening messages addressed to them on the boat? Especially if no one was supposed to know they were in town?"

A smile crossed my lips and I thanked the light bulb. Then I spent the next year writing Savannah Grace.

So next time you’re headed to Folly, be sure to take a look at the boat. You never know what kind of crazy message it might display. But also take a moment to remember why the boat is there: it’s a monument to all those who braved the fury of Hurricane Hugo’s killer winds and lived to tell about it -- and went on to rebuild their homes and lives and discover a strength they never knew they had. 

Long live The Boat!

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