A man here on the
dock was given an old
Samson 35ish
ferro sailboat. He is a
carpenter. He made new
hatch covers for about 2 months. My husband volunteered to give him some
sailing lessons, but when they went out, he was looking at the scenery, acting like a passenger and asked zero questions.
After a year of woodworking, he was talking to a friend down in
Baja who said he just had a complete
engine overhaul for $1600 and he decided to sail down there from up here (the US/Canadian border). He prepared like mad for a week. We all tried to talk him out of it but, no dice. I stopped trying when he said to me "If I don't get off this
dock now, I'll end up like you, spending all my time and
money on fixing the
boat and I don't want to do that".
He set off at 2pm on a windy day that forecasted 30 knots by sundown. By the time he ran aground 30 miles away he was blocking a harbor entrance. He tried to get off for 2 days using all his maritime knowledge

It was the end of a spring tide and the high tides he needed to float off wouldn't return for a month or so. The harbormaster told him if he didn't listen to his
advice, he would declare his boat a
danger to
navigation and he (the harbormaster) would decide how to get it off.
A week later the guy came back to our harbor, somewhat (but not too much) embarassed by his "adventures", stripped the boat, gave it to the next chump and walked away to the next boat.
What I remember the most is the look on his face as he explained what had happened and he said to me with a straight face" "That boat has it in for me - I went out 3 times and I ran aground 3 times - that boat is bad luck."