Rob, your story and these stories people are telling mean a lot. Really.
Basically the basis of your passion is similar to mine.
Back when I was kid, I spent most of my spring to fall weekends at my Grandparents cottage. And all my life, from as far back as I can remember, I've been boat crazy. And probably crazier than anyone in our family. They tell me when I was a toddler I would literally start jumping up and down and yell every time a boat would go by the cottage.
And at home in the city away from the lake, I had set up the lake around the house made of Legos. My Grandparents cottage was water access, so in one room I had their cottage built, along with Lego docks and some lego boats. I would also make lego outboards for the boats and write Mercury and Johnson on them in marker, just to add a little authenticity!
In another room I would have the marina, also built out of legos and complete with docks, gas pumps, you name it. And what I would do is literally pretend drive the boats back and forth to the cottage "kid style" in make believe land.
And as I was growing up, by Grandparents were kind enough to always progressively move me up through boats. So I started in a little Canadian Tire blow up dingy, then a few years later I got an old sailboat with no sail that I paddled around the bay. Then a few later they added an electric motor to the sailboat. Then a few years later I moved up to an old tin boat with a 5.5 and so on it went.
Eventually, when I was about 12 or 13 I got a seaflea and put the 5.5 on it. A few years later we upgraded the SeaFlea and also put a 7.5 on it.
Now where the Checkmate connection comes in is like this. Neighbours of ours down the lake had this beautiful cottage and you guessed it, they had a Checkmate. I think it was a TRV but I know for sure it had a 150 Merc inline six.
The Check itself was a combo of red and black metal flake. And it was actually really cool as inside the boat it was all black flake with just the odd spec of red here and there. The carpet was black and the seats and vinyl was solid white. As the flake made it's way back towards the hull, it progressively got redder until it was more or less a solid red with the odd spec of black. Basically the opposite of the inside. It was one of the coolest boats I've ever seen. I'm not sure if Check did that flake fade on a regular basis back then, but I'll tell you it was stunning looking.
So for me, as a boat crazy kid, this boat was just unbelievable. So eventually I got to know the kids of this family as they also had a seaflea, so we would run the lake together in our seafleas and then once in a while their Dad would take us out for a ride in the Check. And to me at least, that boat was just a dream boat that I've never forgotten to this day. Eventually the family sold their cottage and they moved to another lake, so that's when the fun sorta came to an end so-to-speak.
Well fast forward a few years, and I actually ended up buying up the friend's old property, although by the time I got it the main cottage was torn down by a short sighted developer. But the guest cabin is still in-tact, and that is where we stay until such time as we can rebuild a main cottage once again. And this site, was literally born from within that little guest cabin while my own Checkmate sat at the dock on a rainy September day. And literally as I sat watching the rain come down, I just kept thinking how there were only a few weeks of boating left and then it would be time to shut things down for the season. And that was the real motivation for starting the site. Namely, that I wanted to swap some Check pictures and share some stories with some fellow Checkmate and boating enthusiasts during the winter off-season.
So that was how this little site came to be.
And all the other things like Endless Boating, all the old outboard and vintage boating brochures, for me is just all part of the nostalgia of remembering back to being a kid at my Grandparent's cottage and thinking about all the boats and motors that I could only dream of owning one day.
Thanks for sharing your story.
-Chris
banana:
I like your smilies too. 
:cheers