I think My friend may have a sailing problem.

[Giro]

Let’s face it, everyone reading this forum has some kind of “thing” about sailing. Just like drinking, there are the never drinkers, the occasional drinkers, the once a week drinkers, the once a day one drink drinkers, the more than one a day drinkers, the heavy everyday drinkers, the so called “functioning” alcoholics, the non functioning alcoholics and the hard core life ruining family destroying waste-case drinkers.
Let’s all hope and pray that sailing never comes to this. Addiction is never a good thing.

[jmschmidt]

Your friend may have a legal problem along with his sailing problem. This depends on the wording of his listing agreement with his broker. The broker, through who's efforts apparently procured a full-price offer, may be entitled to seek his full commission from your friend by taking legal action.

Of course, if your friend truly is a gentleman and a sailor, he will recognize his broker's best efforts for what they are and pony up the commission thereby avoiding a legal enganglment.

[GafferMate]

“When you take away a man’s gods, you must replace them with something of value”

Below is an edited collage of responses given to my request for feedback (and my response in blue) on how to address the issues of Aging and Life With/Without Boat. I appreciate ALL, but these are the ones that ‘rang’ for me:

JPA Cate
• My hope with this is to sort of "taper off". Find somewhere shore based to live. Marina for boat. Find fun things to do on land, and continue to use boat till it becomes a burden. Then sell ASAP. Yes, it is hard, but to turn over stewardship of the boat when it is just too hard at haulout time, or just more money than one wants to spend any more for something you're not using, it is a little past the ideal time. But sometimes we're slow to turn loose of our dreams and habits, and we're only human.
• stewardship idea… is useful to take on board… allows for seeking out potential new stewards well in advance of the time you want them to take over, in the way one might seek out an apprentice to take over when one was gone.
• build a satisfying life ashore
Ann, as always, you offer more than one valuable option to consider. I may have to make another post with greater details of my somewhat unique (or so it seems) situation that make it difficult to gain an overview but I do not have a lot of free time…due to juggling a full life on shore while still living and maintaining life on board.

TIMREYN
• I have found my serenity and happiness living my dream! I wouldn't be able to sell my boat either… too much emotion tied up in it.
This seems to be the crux for most of us: LIVING the dream; living—not dreaming—a life reflective of values that give our lives integrity; as in whole, strength.

Kd99truck
• “the boat is just a boat it is you that gives it life, the boats soul lives in your mind, without you it’s just another inanimate object.”
Your sensitive responses to the two members below took the sting out of your first post, so thank you; very much appreciated.
• QWERT: It is your attention that has animated the timber and steel, and you both have made the world better for others to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Thank you
• Rayjay: I too am glad to know I am not alone
Me, too...


QWERT
• I look on myself as the temporary custodian of these boats. They will both be around long after I have started pushing up the daisies, hopefully giving many others as much enjoyment as they gave me…

• Inanimate objects do corrode away but it can be a much longer process than our span. One could argue that they have been of more benefit, significance, to civilisation (for want of a more appropriate word) than I have.................


Building one’s own boat has the added commitment of bringing something unique into the world—like a birth of a child. Partly because we built PILAR to embody the simple life we valued, and partly because I was in denial about not parenting children, I came to view boats as akin to Special Needs Children: incapable of taking care of themselves but offering tremendous moments of joy in return for the efforts required to keep them functioning. As long as we take care of our boats, they will take care of us.

CHRIS CRINGLE
• I just couldn't bear to see a beloved boat go to some Bozo whom I did not think knew enough to properly care for her.
Exactly my fears about selling. You and Celestialsailor are together on this sense of responsibility towards an ’inanimate object’ that seems so very much alive, so instinctively responsive to slight breezes or swells, even at rest on a mooring,.

CELESTIALSAILOR
• The buyer was a total basket case of an individual. The deal was hell. During the process, I actually kicked him and his Entourage off the boat and cancelled the deal.

• As long as my little ship holds the mirror, I will always be a young man sailing her
Lovely…the love given and reflected back. Every time I row away from my boat I am awed that she is mine and nothing seems impossible, everything will be an adventure.

GIRO
• everyone reading this forum has some kind of “thing” about sailing... Addiction is never a good thing.
I’d call it ‘commitment’, not addiction. I’d even offer the idea that there’s honor and dignity in doing the most onerous of tasks instead of demeaning it as ‘JUST WORK’ done as quickly as possible without attention. No relationship can survive that.



But, Yes, the intense last level of addiction you've accurately evolved is a terrible state to reach. Maybe it could be accurate for those who compulsively collect boats of all kinds that cannot be maintained and thereby die slow deaths of disintegration.


Wooden boats especially--wood that was alive before being transformed into a work of art (or workman-like art) and to not give some sort of honor to that life that it was, prior, and to what was created from it, is painful to contemplate for one's own boat--wood or not.

[Kd9truck]

Good on ya GafferMate!! That’s some positive energy you just put out.

[rickee]

Isak Dinesen said the cure for all human problems is saltwater; tears, sweat, or the sea.
Sailing easily provides all three.

[rsementi]

Tell him to sell it now while getting is good. Then by this time next year, he’ll have more choices to buy at lower prices due to the oncoming market “correction”. And that’s putting it mildly.

[capn ken]

Originally Posted by Ween

The meaning of life and the answer to all things...sailing.

Or 42.

Or in my case both, sailing a 42.

Your friend needs to concede. Resistance is futile.

42 is always the answer! However what is the question? Love the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy segues

[zephyr4]

You said your friend may have a sailing problem, but then your story shows he has a good boat. So what was the problem?

[CaptJPMcGuire]

Originally Posted by GafferMate

Delightful as this somewhat tongue-in-cheek exchange is, for those of us (me) who are fast approaching old age on a boat that has provided a meaningful life and a beautiful home for decades (3 shy of 5) the reality of having to sell her is a very difficult and lonely issue to grapple with.


Anyone else in a similar situation who has already dealt with the this issue, please chime in? I'd be grateful.

I 'wok' one day and realized it was a lot of work for my older 75 year old wife to hoist and douse the main. She was having trouble putting in a reef in only a force 2 breeze, It took forever to get the 35" Bruce aboard as well. So I bought a power boat (Grand Banks). Now with everything mechanical- engine, anchor windlass, thrusters --she has no excuses. But now with free additional time on her hands she is still refusing to cook real meals. I guess I'll have to now hire a damn crew to cook and clean. Of course with the price of GAS and Diesel mby I'll go back to the Ensign 22 and just feel the power of the wind --instead of the false power of money!😜

Ok I jest a bit. We did downsize to a smaller Obout Board Cruiser and enjoyed it---gas price has us aground for a rest at this time. 😩

[Caribe14]

I was "Hooked" at old age of 36......when I bought a Hobbie Cat on a "whem"! Sold my last, 3rd sailboat in 2007 after being diagnosed with ALS 5 years earlier. Now age 75, fifteen years latter, I am still walking ....somewhat, so I am "Greatly Blessed" to still be alive! ........ Damm... I so MISS being on the water.. having the Wind-in-my- SAIL! I passed the "sailing disease" (you KNOW it's in-Your-Blood), onto my 16 yr old son when I allowed him to take my Hobbie Cat to the Lake..... ONCE! Even though he was STUCK in the middle of the Lake on a HOT Sunday afternoon.....with ... NO Breeze for 1 1/2 hours...... "he was Hooked"!

[skenn_ie]

My brother has been sailing since he could walk, probably longer. Me, less so because I get seasick. He was a fisherman, but used to sail in his time off. He moved up to captain on a small ship, and still sailed. He gets fidgety if he hasn't been on the sea for a month! He is almost 70 and has no intention of stopping.

[jasrclark]

The addiction for me started at about 8 yrs old in a friend's sabot. I'm currently sitting on my 38 ft sailboat in Two Harbors, Catalina. So, I've obviously not been able kick it either. As addictions go, sailing is a pretty nice one.

[Fortytwo]

Originally Posted by capn ken

42 is always the answer! However what is the question? Love the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy segues

Don’t panic.

[MicHughV]

What is this lure
For which there is no cure
It draws the strong and demure
These heavenly sails that are so pure

This hunk of glass, this glorious form
This unique piece of nautical norm
It’s sight will make your pounding heart roar
As you get ready to sail it across the sea
We are not different, you and me

It’s the touch, the feel, the whole damn thing
It makes you pulse and pound, like a boxer in a ring
It just bloody well makes you feel like a king
As from the dock, this boat you fling

As you touch that wheel you feel it's might
It’s an uncanny music that sounds just right
As from your heart the sound is in flight
As you caress a spoke, it’s quite a sight

They are from here and there, always causing a stir
Some are shiny and some are a blur

You’ll see us out there raising cash
We’ll open our wallets in a flash
And give the last dime from our stash
Just for a piece of rope to add to the mash

So just give me some wind and a cloud or two
You’ll never understand, your mind I blew
At my boat addiction, I’m just one of the few
Gazing at perfection so shiny and new

You’ll wonder in amazement at my silly grin
To be so happy is not a sin

There's a lot of us out there like me and you
From old to young, we all stay true
We’re all doing the thing we like to do
Every day we sail is a day anew

[GafferMate]

Inspiring poem, am so pleased you posted it, MicHughVM, so much of it to relate to whatever our gender or boat configuration. I hope it won't seem a challenge but instead an encouragement to others to add their poetic experiences, also inspired by yours, as I was, for my adding one of mine? It was begun on a night passage:


“I wonder often what long term boating does for the soul...” her cousin had written and tonight, her hand lightly guiding Pilar’s tiller through a warm South Seas breeze, the question floats gently into the cockpit with her.

Sighing, she squirms in her seat. Oh, what does sailing do for your soul? Does it make you a dreamer? A poet? Or just a vagabond, imbuing meaning into inanimate objects and fancying personalities for companionship...

In the early days of making passages she discovered she thought of her boat as a big-boned gypsy; the sturdy matriarch whose sleek brown hands shape tortillas before the campfire and afterwards, gathers up her voluminous skirts to whirl passionately amid the fire’s flames and shadows. Now, with her hand grasped sure and light on the tiller, she knows more than ever she’s in company with a living being: the graceful length of springy oak has become a forearm, her own arm resting easily along its measure and, in the manner of dancers promenading side-by-side, she sees herself and her boat—their shoulders squared, chins lifted, eyes focused ahead—moving forward to a majestic rhythm. It is a courtly Castilian dance of high-stepping dips and nods over languid swells; to the right and left, foam petticoats swish and curl as the dancers part the waves; Maestro Southern Cross is leading the way...