Suzanne Culp

Another weekend dawns bright and clear, the Carolina sky like a vault of blue overhead. Suzanne Culp is gassing up the boat while her 12-year-old son Ryan jostles excitedly with his friends. They can't wait to get out on the water. It's summertime and life is good.

When it heats up around here, people crave the water. Suzanne couldn't really blame Ryan when he was about six years old and all he wanted to do on the weekends was go over to the neighbor's house and get in their swimming pool. That was before Suzanne had the boat. She realized that she might miss out on a lot of time with her son if she didn't find something that could compete with the neighbors' clear, blue attraction. She looked into getting her own swimming pool, and she looked into getting a boat. Then all of a sudden it just clicked. An acquaintance announced he was selling his boat; and when Suzanne went to look at it, she found it to be just her size.

"I always had an interest in boating, and I just fell in love with the water down here," said Suzanne, who admits she didn't really know a lot about driving a boat when she bought hers. "I took a boater's safety course, but needless to say, I learned a lot the first summer by trial and error. And I've never been stuck on a sandbar, thank God."

Suzanne is a single working mother who has never been afraid to go for something that she really wants. The fact that boating is generally seen as a man's world-they are the captains while their wives are the first mates-did not seem to intimidate her at all. If boating was the way she could make the most of the evenings and weekends she had to spend with her son, then that's what she was going to do.

"When my father found out I bought a boat, he said, 'What are you thinking adding this to your plate?'" recalls Suzanne. "I said, 'I'm not going to tell you what I was thinking; just come down here and I'll take you out. When you see Bluffton from the water, I won't have to say another word.'"

She and Ryan, along with many of the neighborhood families who have followed Suzanne's lead and gotten boats of their own, revel in summer days spent out on the river. They like to explore the little creeks and go fishing or cruise over to Daufuskie for the day. The Bluffton Sandbar is Suzanne's favorite spot. For her, there's nothing better than hanging out there all afternoon, playing bocce or whiffle ball with the kids and visiting with friends, whom she doesn't mind shuttling back and forth to the Sandbar as many times as necessary. As for Ryan and his friends, they love nothing more than to go tubing.

"They think it's absolutely the greatest thing in the world to get thrown into the May River by force and say, 'Oh, that hurt, take me again!'" said Suzanne. "They're typical 12-year-olds."

Seven years after she took the plunge and bought her boat, Suzanne has this to say to other women: "If there is something you really want to do, just go for it, no matter what it is. I know boating is typically a male-dominated thing and a lot of women feel intimidated by how big a responsibility it is. But like anything, you just have to take a risk to reap the benefits."