In "Wilbur Hubbard" writes:


"NE Sailboat" wrote in message
news:a4hMh.13718$dG.4000@trndny08...
Where are you getting these figures? $100 thousand dollars for a boat
that needs $20 thousand in fitting out expenses?
I don't know where you sail but where I sail your figures are nuts!


I'm talking about a new boat. Not a used boat. New boats come pretty
bare. By the time you get all the things you need you can easily spend
twenty grand. You need anchors, chain, rode, extra sails, epirb, radios,
GPSs, depth/wind instuments, radar, refrigerator, extra batteries, solar
panels, wind generators, petroleum generator, air conditioner,
autopilot, bimini, dodger, and on and on and on. Price some of that
stuff and you'll probably agree 20K is rather conservative.

If you can not afford it, or if the cost go over your pain treshold,
then to me, it is stupid to buy it in the first hand. If you bought it
only to brag about it to your friends (do you have any?) or your
relatives or your business competition, then why are you complaining?


Most of the folks near me own their boats. They have owned their
boats for years, in some cases generations.

But, many financed them and paid more than twice what their boats are
worth because of interest on long-term loans.

But if this was the only way in their case to get the boat they wanted
when they wanted and where they wanted, so it is the cost you pay. If
another boat for some other people made a better deal, so do it.


They hang on a mooring which they also "own". Pay $65 per year in
mooring fee to the town.

More boats pay for slips. Moorings are much smarter.

In Sweden they say: If it tastes, it wil cost you. So if you do not want
to pay for the slip, then go to the mooring, if you do not accept
moorings, they pay for the slip and stop whining.

They all brag that the first fill up of the season is the last fill up
of the season as they have little diesels .

Good to hear but that isn't the typical sailboater of today who motors
most of the time and unrolls a head sail on perfect days to try to fool
himself and others that he's a sailor.

Again we have people with more money than brains. If they do not like to
sail or if they do not want to sail or if they do not know how to sail,
why are they buying a sailing boat. If you buy the mast just for show,
then you pay for it, and shut up.

Everybody hauls out, this is New England. Runs around $1,000 for
haul, store, launch. But, they all work on their boats, have a great
time doing that, meet all kinds of interesting folks, the family gets
to do something worthwhile together, etc.

Money, money, money. You don't store for free. Dry storage is almost
expensive as a slip many places.

Seems to me, you have an obsession to money. Poor you. Seems to me that
many sailors are rich enough to pay for their boats and slips and
moorings and repairs, without whining about it. Perhaps you could get a
cheaper hobby?

After 10 years, 20 years or 30 years .............. they get to sit
around on a beautiful evening ,, light breeze, the smell of the ocean,
rigging singing in the wind, and they talk about friends, family, old
times, places they have sailed to, the time they almost sunk, the
anchorage with the seal, or the great little cafe with the pancakes,
and then they talk about the sailors who are gone ... the mom's and
dad's and brothers and sisters, uncles, the smartest person who ever
lived; my aunt.

Yah yah yah. All that maudlin family smooze! I want none of it. When you
get old and are pre-occupied with the "good old days" and discuss all
your aches and pains ad nausea then you might as well get a room at the
old folks home where you can hear it 24/7.

If you are not interested, why come here and whine to us about it?

How much is that worth? $100,000? $200,000? A million?

You can have your cake and eat it too. That's the point. Don't waste
your money on financing, marinas, insurance, and all that crap where you
let others reach right into your pocket and rob you poor.

Are you seriously believing that there is a free lunch? Do you really
believe that if the industry aroung charter boating is making a profit,
I could sail cheaper with the boat I want, where I want and when I want
cheaper than if I cut them away? Looks like your business education has
fallen short or there is something wrong in your brains.

I pitty anyone who spends his time counting his money rather than
counting his blessings.

I can count my blessings better than you because I can afford a more
expensive caluclator.

It is not the price of the calculator, it is if you know how to use it.

A few years back I was bicycle touring way up in norther Vermont. I
stopped in a little coffee place, sat at the table, had one of the
best pieces of pie on earth. An old farmer came in, sat down next to
me. We got to talking about this and that.

I said to him maybe I shouldn't have spent so much on my bicycle.

He looked at me and said "money is like blood, doesn't do anyone any
good unless it is circulating".

Circulating is different than bleeding it out on the ground which is
exactly what you do to it when you finance a boat long term and when you
pay to keep it in a marina, etc.

Moat of us keep a boat in a marina or a yacht club. In the no profit
yacht clubs many of us work for the common benefit and get to know some
nice people in the process. Even the charter boats are kept in some
marinas, who pays for them?

Pretty sound thinking.

Sound like it makes sense but it's incomplete.

Not as badly as yours.

I am not rich, and yes, I probably do spend more on my boat than I
should. So what.

Knock yourself out but don't go around telling everybody how great an
investment your boat is because it's a crappy investment. Justify it
simply the way you did above. Come right and say it's a lousy investment
in monetary terms but the social benefits help ease the pain.

I dare to say, that I would need much more money to do my sailing
chartering the boat, either I had to cut down on the time, the location
would not be the one I prefer and the boats would not be such I would
enjoy sailing them as much.

It beats sitting around looking at the Wall St Journal.

Not if what you see in the Journal tells you you just made ten grand in
the last week. . .

Do you happen to know that most of uss get only 24 hours per day to
spend, you cannot buy more hours with your grand, we have certain number
of days to live, but I am afraid the stress and trouble in making this
grand will reduce the number of your days more than you can buy with it.

And, I don't think I ever met a man yet that said to me "remember the
september ... issue of the Wall St Journal ... that was a great time
wasn't it ... sure wish old .... was here so we could read it again".

Why would anybody do that? It's better to enjoy the wealth and dwell on
how it's growth progressed.

You are free to enjoy your wealth, but seems to me, you do not have
enough to afford your sailing without it causing you some pain.

Got to go. Time to smoke a fine cigar and make love with one of my many
female companions who love the life wealth can give them...

If you believe that buyin love and sex, I hope you will be happy with
it, we go sailing and some or our girlfriends come along, becaue they
like us, not only our money.

- Lauri Tarkkonen