Airboats are expensive to build or buy. Aircraft engines and propellers aren't cheap, let alone all the other pieces and parts required.

Lots of airboats are put together with whatever parts the owner can afford, and held together with spit and bailing wire. A great many of them don't even have electronic ignition - the driver has to start them up by sticking his arm in the prop cage and giving the prop a spin. (Not something I'M going to do!)

Some less-than-admirable airboaters have been known to mysteriously obtain a badly needed part at the exact same time that someone else has had the exact same part stolen from his boat. Too many coincidences like that and a person finds that it's no longer pleasant to run into other airboaters in secluded areas (they know what to do with bodies!). Sometimes they even find that a different town further south suits them better.

Planes fly over the marsh to land at the Melbourne airport.

Anyway, a few years ago a small plane - a Cessna or Piper Cub - crashed in the marshes near town. The pilot was all right and managed to hike into town, but by time he got back out to retrieve his plane a few hours later the engine was gone.

There must have been some traffic on the river that night! Judy and I know of at least four different guys who sped out with the intention of "liberating" that engine, but it was gone before any of them got there.

They were innocent this time, but the investigation went on for a long time and everyone had to keep a low profile until it all died down.

The story I got from the grapevine was that within hours of crashing that engine was on it's way to Alaska to be built into a snowmobile.