Accessibility

[Robb White will be joining us here on RudderPosts as an occasional guest author. Here's his first offering]

Reading about Matt down at the IBEX show in Miami got me to thinking about what the whole trouble with the boating "scene" is. It is too damned accessible is what. Any fool can sit barebutt in the cockpit of the bareboat Beneteau in the shade of magical Moorea and sip on the Daiquiri whipped up by the 12 Volt blender and call home on the cell phone. This person didn't even have to read Maurice Griffiths or the Pardeys or watch old National Geographic specials about Irving and Electa Johnson and probably doesn't even know who Joshua Slocum was. All he has to possess is credit card skill to gain access to the most remote possible places. You can probably rent a heavily insured C&C in the Straits of Magellan.

Any damn fool can buy a Bayliner and, in immaculate ignorance, bog through the no-wake zone without even knowing what causes a wake. I don't know where people get all this money. I mean, from my observation, it seems like they spend all their time driving around in the car... can't be doing much productive work. Boats are just too cheap and that cheapness enables too much stupidity to be too widely distributed and the thing that makes them cheap is the convenience of unskilled modern construction. When I was young, a boat cost real money. I mean, a Lyman was an object of great worth and by the time a person managed to scratch up the scratch he or she usually knew a thing or two about a thing or two from mooning over the data while he waited for the money to build up in his savings account.

As for "running plugs" that's a cheap shot. I knew a man who made two different boats off of running plugs. His normal business was making knock-off fiberglass fenders and hoods for "R" model Mack trucks. He didn't even have a building. His molds just lay around in the yard. He had a little shed where he kept his chopper gun spool, drums and air compressor but that was it. When Boston Whaler first came out with the little 13 1/2 footer this man borrowed one from a dealer, sprayed it with mold release and sprayed on a mold. He had the boat back to the dealer the same day he borrowed it and, in about a week, supplied that dealer with cheap junk fiberglass boats that looked exactly like Boston Whalers unless you looked closely enough to see the chopper gun bristles sticking out all over the speckled paint on the inside. This man also "borrowed" an 18 foot wood duck boat I built and sprayed a mold on that... both hull and deck. That's how I came to know him. I saw one of those boats and went down there and worked out a deal. He was to pay me $40 for each hull retroactive back to the first one and, if I found that he had not lived up to his part of the agreement, I was going to clean up about half an acre of Florida scrub with his polystyrene poisoned, wizened up old ass. Of course I was in the vigor of youth back then. Now I protect myself from contributing a "running plug" to some yahoo by making sure there is a good bit of tumblehome in the stern of my little skiffs. Most chopper gun artists don't want to have to fool with a split mold so they pass up my boats for something a little cheaper to "produce." From the examples I see all over the place, it doesn't make any difference how plug ugly the plug is.

I have said this before and I'll say it again.  "If your boat isn't too pretty to walk away from without turning around for another look, you ain't getting all the goody out of life."

--Robb White

Comments

[Bob Cleek]

Amen to that!

[Ron Carter]

Everything is too easy today. Moved out here 15 yr ago to enjoy the woods. Now the "boomers" are decending on us, running up land prices and wanting paved roads, water & sewer. They ought to stay in town. Can't afford to keep a boat in a slip any longer at $4,000+ per year for a 6 month season.