Cruising Sailboats: a Dying Breed?

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

We say that to keep people away, it works especially well with the Canadians

But I’ve been looking forward to meeting you in person Don so we can duke it out for real . Kidding, of course.

Actually, I always enjoy meeting up with fellow forum denizens. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with about a 1/2 dozen of CFers and SNers. Everyone is more enjoyable in the real world … well, most everyone .

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

But I’ve been looking forward to meeting you in person Don so we can duke it out for real . Kidding, of course.

Actually, I always enjoy meeting up with fellow forum denizens. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with about a 1/2 dozen of CFers and SNers. Everyone is more enjoyable in the real world … well, most everyone .

You have to come south to see me. I went up to Maine this summer, but that’s getting too close to wearing long pants to risk again.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

We find the Med much cheaper than the US. I get by on less than 15 euros per day, and never go in to marinas. I just spent $9000 to keep our boat in Maine for seven months. Italy costs me 1800 euros for the same seven months at a much nicer marina with security. The weather stinks in Maine and I can sail all winter long if I like in Italy.

Are you comparing keeping your boat in a marina in Maine vs anchorages in the Med?

Hardly surprising that you find it cheaper. If you are anchoring out in Maine and somehow paying $9k in Maine, you are doing something wrong.

[DeValency]

Hmmm... and where would the water/ocean experience here?
Radiator's anti-freeze and washers fluids are not really the same...
better returning to the topic here.

Originally Posted by Buzzman

Yeah, I contemplated the tiny mobile thing, but worked out I'd need a 4x4 in order to get far enough away from the bogans with their boomboxes and generators.

We don't have a huge range of 4x4s in Oz, especially not in vans, so am semi-settled on a Mitsubishi Delica LWB, 2.8 turbo-diesel, with an added 'pop-top' roof for full standing headroom when parked up.

I've seen LandCruiser Troopies with pop-top, but the living space is miniscule.

At least with a Deli it has the internal volume of a Hiace or similar (the normal pop-top 2WD option) but also has walk-thru from front seats into cabin.

And apart from head gasket/overheating issues, the Mitsi is not a bad donk.

I'm kinda hopeful someone else brings out something similar (and imports it to Oz) as the Mitsis have never been an official import, so they are relatively rare.

An OKA would be a better option, except for the ruinously expensive cost to buy one. A modern version of a LandRover 101 forward-control might be a good option too, if only someone's military would order one...

Another option I've seen was the (extremely rare like hens teeth rare) Toyota Coaster 4WD bus. 4.2L turbo-diesel, and essentially LandCruiser running gear under a 14-seat bus body.

Go anywhere RV.

Call 'em 'the cruiser's land yacht' if it makes you feel better.

Now back on topic...

[Kenomac]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

Are you comparing keeping your boat in a marina in Maine vs anchorages in the Med?

Hardly surprising that you find it cheaper. If you are anchoring out in Maine and somehow paying $9k in Maine, you are doing something wrong.

No I’m not wrong or mistaken, I know exactly what it costs. I’m comparing keeping by boat in a marina/shipyard for seven months in both locations. It costs 1800 euros in a top first class marina in Italy with on sight security and locked gates during the off season, and it costs $9000 in Maine during the off season to keep it on the hard, which amounts to dirt and mud with no security and no gates. If I also add in the cost of last May and June to keep our boat in New Hampshire to complete the year, it cost an additional $4500 bringing the total to $13,500 for 9 months. Ridiculous compared to the Med where I pay 4500 euros for a full 12 months.

Plus.... the summer weather in Maine sucks, unless of course.... you’re from New England and don’t know any better.

[DeValency]

Mike,
Definitely worth a new thread on cruising in the Med vs. the US (mainly Northeast). As a Boston native that spent years in the Med, I can tell you that from my own experience and preferences Med cruising is by far far better and cheaper (especially when you don't need too much diesel). Most important! - you can sail almost year round while in Maine your'e lucky if you can get 3 months a year without snow, rain, heavy fog... not to mention the ocean mines (AKA lobster pots...).

Even in the Boston-Marblehead-Buzzards Bay-Newburyport side of the pond, my typical hangout waters we can hardly suck 6 months of really enjoyable sailing out of the year. So we pay 100% expenses (at the US inflated fees everywhere), for 50% use...

So one day when I part time retire, my ideal cruising style would be to cruise down Southeast with the birds and even better have a little flotilla of friends to cross the Atlantic over to the Med.

Hope some of us here would like this idea...

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

We’re thinking about that as well. My concern over your way is cost. Northern Europe looks pretty good for our kind of cruising, but it also looks pricy, as do large parts of the Med.

Can a frugal cruiser travel Europe? (I guess I should start a new thread…)

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by Beau.Vrolyk

It is simply not true that "the healthiest economy requires only 10-20% of the population to be working". That's painfully wrong.

I was not claiming that is the case currently.

But it certainly seems to be the future we are heading for.

Read David Graeber about how we've been adapting so far.

I believe we need an entirely different political-economic model to take care of citizen's needs fairly as well as optimize for efficient productivity.

We certainly do not have "free market" economies now. Money in our politics have always resulted in corrupt cronyism, industry subsidies and corporate welfare are rampant distortions.

Not to mention the tax-funded warmongering for corporate benefit, that will in the end destroy what little influence we've been for good in the world.

[a64pilot]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

One of the main reasons we are cruising Newfoundland for the next few seasons is to delay the (seemingly) inevitable journey down south. Most of what I read from you folks who travel the NA east coast and the caribbean is how busy and crowded it all is. I have no desire to cruise with a crowd.

Mike, I left Jax a week or so ago.
I am now in the first anchorage that has another boat in it besides me, and that is because we are in a large population area, Port Salerno.
If you stay just outside of the large population areas, you can easily be by yourself, but you can’t dock in front of the Tiki Bar, which seems to be what draws most.
I go to the towns to buy fuel and food, otherwise we pick anchorages that have no other boats in them, and they are many.

The other thing that has me confused is this mass migration thing South, last year I didn’t see it, and figured it was because I was late, but this year we left Jax right at the beginning of Nov., and I have not seen any mass migration, 90% or better of the boats in the ICW are local boats just riding around, the few cruisers I have seen, just as many are heading North as South?

[MartinR]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

We’re thinking about that as well. My concern over your way is cost. Northern Europe looks pretty good for our kind of cruising, but it also looks pricy, as do large parts of the Med.

Can a frugal cruiser travel Europe? (I guess I should start a new thread…)

Scandinavia is not expensive for cruising. Food is a little more expensive than in the US, but berthing fees for example are very reasonable. And with thousands and thousands of anchorages, you do not need to go into port.

There are few commercial marinas, most boat harbours are club owned and subsidised by the towns they are in. This, together with the culture of doing maintenance yourself makes for cheap boat ownership. Also it is easy to get help when you need it.

The Med is a different beast, but yes, it is doable. In Greece and Turkey you have cheap harbours (expensive Marinas, though) and the rest of the costs are low.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by john61ct

...I believe we need an entirely different political-economic model to take care of citizen's needs fairly as well as optimize for efficient productivity. ...

A job encompasses two prime functions. The first is the one we all think of: doing (apparently) useful tasks. But the other is probably the more important function; a job is the main method for distributing wealth in our capitalist democracies.

It’s not necessary to combine these two functions, and as we move to fewer and fewer jobs, we are finding ways to disassociate these two functions.

[Beau.Vrolyk]

I really do not think we are moving to "fewer and fewer jobs". I doubt anyone can find any evidence of that.

We are most certainly changing what people do when they have a job, but there are not fewer of them. Consider what has happened in China in the decade, tens of millions of people have changed from subsistence farming to manufacturing. Yes, there are fewer jobs in farming in China, automation took care of that. No, there are not fewer jobs over all.

In the United States we are certainly changing the sorts of jobs that people hold, but we haven't reduced the size of the workforce at all. For example, in the following graph from the US Dept. of Labor, the work force has increased by 5% despite a decrease in baby boomers participating. We really do need to base these discussions on data.

Yes, there have been all manner of klaxon horns sounding about AI and Robots taking away jobs, but that has not happened and there is no evidence that it will happen. Humans are amazingly inventive at finding and creating work.

[LLCoolDave]

Times are a changing. Here is a thoughtful article about technology and the next 40 years. Jobs will become so technologically complex that a significant percent of the population will become unemployable.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...s-sapiens-book

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

A job encompasses two prime functions. The first is the one we all think of: doing (apparently) useful tasks. But the other is probably the more important function; a job is the main method for distributing wealth in our capitalist democracies.

It’s not necessary to combine these two functions, and as we move to fewer and fewer jobs, we are finding ways to disassociate these two functions.

Should certainly have nothing to do with things like healthcare and a dignified old age.

Speaking of dignity, that is a third **very** important result of being "employed" in the modern world.

Being a student or artist is a workaround unavailable for many.

The effects of the right wing's shameful brainwashing for decades, demonizing those dependent on government subsidies, myths about rentiers being "job creators", the whole trickle-down scam. . .

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by Beau.Vrolyk

In the United States we are certainly changing the sorts of jobs that people hold, but we haven't reduced the size of the workforce at all.

See also the "******** Jobs" reference above, really interesting stuff

[Beau.Vrolyk]

Originally Posted by LLCoolDave

Times are a changing. Here is a thoughtful article about technology and the next 40 years. Jobs will become so technologically complex that a significant percent of the population will become unemployable.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...s-sapiens-book

I have worked in this area for most of my adult life. Yes, automation will eliminate jobs. I'd just point out that the sort of fear-mongering that this article delivers was extremely popular at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the late 1800s, it happened again as Ford built up the assembly line in the 1920s, it happened again in the 1960s with the introduction of automated machine tools, it happened again in the 1990s with the first wave of AI software.

Each and every time this sort of article has been written, it has proven to be wrong at predicting the end (let alone even a reduction) in the size of the employed workforce.

Yes, without doubt truck and taxi drivers will not be needed within 20 years. But, to then assume that there won't be jobs for those people is a serious logical flaw.

There are multiple unstated assumptions in this argument which are outright false if not very low probability of being true.

First, we as humans would have to stop inventing new things to do as work. That hasn't happened in the past and is extremely unlikely to happen in the future.

Second, there is the assumption that things like AI software can do everything; which was false in 2000, is false now, and will remain false for a long long time. Computer software can trivially do things which are extremely well understood. It is terrible at doing thing which we don't understand. Consider how few things we really understand as a species, the number is daunting.

Finally, there is the unstated assumption that "work" will look like it does now. (meaning a job in an office, in a truck, or on a work site) That most certainly has changed over and over again. Work is done wherever and whenever someone has a task they want done. When people stopped being hunter-gatherers and settled down on farms, work changed. When people left the farms to go to the factories, work changed. Now that factories need fewer people, work is changing again.

This most certainly does NOT mean that there won't be any work. It probably does mean that work will be different. Those are two radically different conclusions. The former is simply not supported by historical or current data. The later is a much more probable conclusion based on the facts as we know them. But, it also isn't nearly as dramatic and doesn't yield click-bait headlines for the media who is trying to make a living selling on-line ads.

(note: On-line ad design is a great example of job that didn't exist 15 years ago and is now booming; as are software engineering and data scientist.)