His business name says it all

Jeff Dood stands at the helm of his boat, order pad in hand, legs braced, as a candy-apple red wakeboard boat swishes to a stop alongside.

"Gimme a Screaming Weenie and a Diet Coke," the driver calls across the choppy Willamette River.

"I want a Panini Weenie," a passenger adds.

"Weenies on the Water?" another passenger says, reading the menu on the side of Dood's boat. "That is so tight, dude! I want a weenie, too. Do you take Visa?"

Dood shakes his head; his smile never falters. He loves his boat, the river, cooking weenies on the weekends and seemingly everyone he comes in contact with.

As he takes the wakeboarders' cash he says, "Give me 10 minutes. I'll give you a honk when it's done."

The grill is blisteringly hot, but Dood calmly tends to it, the smell of meat and onions drifting across the water. He talks about his life and his boat, instinctively planting his feet and slamming the grill shut in the rocking wake of a cigarette boat that speeds past.

First came his love of the water. Then the hunger from spending longer than expected there. Next was wishing he could grab a quick bite without leaving. And finally, the idea: Weenies on the Water.

All he needed was a boat. He found just the one on eBay, for sale in Texas. A long way from his Southeast Portland home, but exactly what he was looking for. "I've never seen another one like it," he says. It has wheels on the hull to hook up to a tow without a trailer. He loves or hates the wheels, depending on where he is. "They work great on land . . . but the drag in the water's no good."

Still, "it's the perfect boat." It took him two years to get it up to code for a mobile food license and transform it into the boat it is today. Fortunately, in his life off the water, Dood is a residential designer with a degree in architecture. A boat is different, but he was up for learning. "I love solving problems and designing new ways of doing things."...