Rick - Welcome & Thanks

[GordMay]

Rick:
Welcome to the Cruisers Forum, and THANKS for your EXCELLENT posts!
I'm certain that your valuable contributions (technical expertise) will be much appreciated by all , and your patience sorely tested.
Best regards,
Gord

[Rick]

It is nice to be appreciated. I dropped out and went cruising for several years yet eventually had to come back and make money (ugh!) Hopefully next time we will not have to come back just for money. Re-entry is painful and I often hear people say that they have to go back to the real world. I believe that the real world is not the work-a-day one it is out there on a boat!

Although I have been in boating virtually all of my life I do not desire to live aboard as a technical nihilist such as is espoused by the Pardeys. I like grinding my coffee beans to make fresh coffee. I like my radar and chart plotter and my elbows just hurt thinking about throwing a lead-line repetitively overboart and retreaving it! Give me my depthsounder! I love to read at night with lots of bright light and perhaps listen to a CD on a nice sound system. And, boy is it nice to turn on various fans to clear out the air should I inadvertantly burn toast in the toaster. How nice to step on a button and haul in all of that chain from a bottom 90 feet down without getting out of breath.

We often hear or read the statement that if it is electrical or electronic if it hasn't broken it is just a matter of time before it does (With such a bad attitude towards technology we never would have put a man on the moon) yet there are many cruisers quietly enjoying these things without many such mythical failures. To be sure, in those cases they have chosen the products well, installed them well, and maintained them well. On my sailboat I LOVE my engine. It has gotten me out of several potentially bad times...it always starts when I need it.

I love all of the systems on a boat and love investigation various improvements and ideas to make cruising life more enjoyable. Every cruising boat that I have been invited aboard has some neat thing or idea which has been invented or implemented by their owners and I learn from them everytime. I love the people, the comraderie and I love the water.

Hope to learn more from all of you.

Thanks,
Rick Young

[Alan Wheeler]

Excellent reply there Rick. Yep, I bet if the Chris Columbus, Cpt Cook, and Abel Tasman had a choice. Side by Side, The Boat they took and a boat with the Electronic stuff we have today, guess what one they would have sailed off over the horizon into the Sunset with.
The only thing that I think is harming the cruising community, is the big mega palace yachts. Well it's not there fault really, it's the greed of those that will charge like a wounded bull, because they know these Rich guy's have the dosh and will part out with it, with little argument. Some places are just tooo expensive to be fun.

[Strygaldwir]

Hello Rick;

I have to agree with you to the extent that the luxuries don't preclude the adventure. I'd not choose to go bare/minimialist, but if that were the only way I could go, I would do without a lot of things. As I sit here on my 37 foot cat with light streaming in, coffee brewing, listening to soft music on the Dell DJ, thinking I should pop some ingredients in the bread maker for fresh bread, I am thankful for what I can have. But I realize most of it is optional. The sun, the waves, the wind whistling about outside offer just as much "entertainment".

The intresting thing about cost is, if it is too much, we have the option of not paying! If we refuse to buy at a particular price, a seller can't sell at that price! Amazingly simple economic principal, that we all too readily forget. I have to say there are very few things I have been unable to get less expensively by shopping. Well except for that Allcraft water heater that is ($1300 for a water heater!!! ) Often times negotiating with the seller works, finding a different provider, getting a different product, or grabbing a book and learning to do it yourself. All options. I don't blame anyone else for choosing to pay more. I just find a solution that works for me, or adjust my thinking to realize the price is the actual value of the thing and I am the one who is misguided. (I still think 1 million dollars for a house built 2 miles from a landfill is nuts! But that's California for you.)


Cheers

Keith