My annoyance with that silly Mark Twain quote prompts this post.

Although casting off everyday cares to go cruising sounds ideal to many
people, I have to wonder about people aspire to it with intense zeal.
I wonder if they have so little to offer to humanity that they would
abandon society for such a narcissistic goal. If you spend all of your
time cruising, you essentially give up making any difference to the
rest of humanity. My personal belief ("belief" means I have no proof
or even a good argument for it) is that each of us has some unique
skill that could somehow be of use to humanity. Unfortunately, very
few people ever discover this skill (a topic that I spend hours
discussing with my unhappy state worker neighbor)but I think you ought
to give it many real tries before giving up and going off cruising.
I have no problem with people who retire and then go cruising, they
have already made their contribution. My argument is with people who
aspire to cruising as their life goal.
The most interesting and to my mind the most successful cruising person
I have ever seen was when I had my old 23' boat docked waaaaaay up the
Carabelle River at a place for $20/month. The boat next to mine was a
trashed out 21' Venture. One day, its hatch was open and a voice
invited me aboard and when I stepped into the cabin, I stepped into
water 1" deep. In the gloom I saw huge cans of green beans labelled
Department of Agriculture that i recognized as early 60s cast-offs from
fallout shelters in Tallahassee (this was 1988). The Master and
Commander of this odd vessel was named Jack who told me that until 6
months ago he had been a homeless drunk but he had somehow been given a
check for $500 that he used to buy this floating (sort-of) home of his
on a whim. I never learned the rest of his story but clearly he had an
interesting life as he had only one ear, half of his left hand,
something wrong with one eye and other physical markings of a less than
normal suburban existence. Jack had a black mongrel dog named "Crow"
that perfectly matched him as it was missing a front paw and its lower
jaw was bent at a strange angle to the rest of its head from being run
over.
Jack sailed this amazing little boat with duct tape repaired sails all
over the northern gulf from Cedar Key all the way over to (this is
almost unbelievable) New Orleans. I'd run into him at odd places and
he could describe the channels of all the cool places I wanted to visit
that also did not have marked channels.
One day, I ran into Jack on a brand new top-of-the-line boat ( I cannot
remember the brand) so I asked him if he had won the lottery. He said
no and volunteered to show me what he was doing so we went below where
I found myself wading through wood shavings. Wood carving tools were
scattered round as were what looked like wooden masks with intricate
gold inlays; they looked sort of Japanese with black lacquer and gold.
He told me that he had carved one and sold it in New Orleans (something
to do with Mardi Gras and Voodoo etc.)and since then had so many orders
he couldnt fill them all and that he didnt even begin working on one
till he was paid several thousand dollars for it. I never saw him
again after that but I always think of him as what a successful cruiser
should be.