Peter Wiley wrote:

They *are* toys. They may be toys that float, but they're still toys.
OTOH my workboats are just that.

My sailboat is a toy. It serves no practical purpose except to provide
me with entertainment.


Well, I don't know. Okay, in that very loose sense, the same sense
that all recreational boats would be classified as toys, meaning they
can be used for recreation and to have fun, we can say that. But
really - well, ask a CoastGuard or Power Squadron member or marine law
enforcer if pwc's are toys, see what they think. The first point they
make in the user's manuals, safety instruction videos, and those
special safety courses you have to take to ride them here in New York
State - is in fact that they are not toys, but serious pieces of
machinery to be approached and treated with respect and seriousness.
Kind of ironic, some of us here are talking about irresponsible,
dangerous operators, and it seems to me that those problems start right
off the bat when these people think of them as toys and approach them
that way, failing to realize that, in a very important way, these
aren't toys at all.

richforman

PDW