A quick thought about boom bust economics

Mind numbing, someones making sense, and, considering hes a man who would actually know, Id say this statement is important...

A friend of mine, who has been looking for a boat for some time, pointed out that he thought the price of decent fixer upper boats would keep falling and only an idiot would buy a boat at the moment.

Me, Im not so sure.

Bubbles confronted with reality always burst sooner or later. Its just a fact of life.

Where boats are concerned it is only a matter of time before folks are going to wake up and realize it is bad economics to sell a boat for less than the price of the lead in its keel...

On a side note, one of the fastest growing  criminal activities in the US of A is the theft of raw materials from buildings and infrastructure... Copper wire/pipe, aluminum, steel, and lead being the most sought after.

Just something to keep in mind...

Listening to Blues Traveler

So it goes...

Read More..

a quick thought on tools and toys

A cost of bad policing, something you need to read, and NASA doing it right...

The other day I was looking at the interior of a nice yacht with a lot of beautiful interior wood, lush fabrics, and a lust inspiring media center focused around a 66" ultra-HD 4K video screen and it inspired two cascading thoughts...

"Boy, Id love to hang out in this boat"

and...

"What a horridly unseamanlike interior for a cruising boat"

Sadly, I find this is pretty much my reactions to most newer designs I look at these days which all seem great on comfort to the Nth degree but are sadly lacking in the practical needs of someone cruising in the real world.

Maybe its the fact that today cruising boats are thought of as toys rather than tools while a generation ago it was all about being a tool and not a toy...

Listening to Lydia Loveless

So it goes...

Read More..

A small thought about budgets and boats

Making a very good point, on considering the price tag, and about how theyre spending your tax dollars...

Ive been researching a lot lately about the costs involved in buying a boat, setting it up for cruising, and actually cruising and, for the most part, what Ive been looking at is pretty depressing reading.

If you go over to the Retirement Project (a very good blog by the way) youll find a lot of links to various cruisers budgets and in the process going through them I noticed something that bothered me...

Hardly anyone writing about budgets has apparently made any mistakes.

Now, maybe its just me, but lookng back at my spending habits where boats are concerned over the last forty-years is chock full of WTF was I thinking, I spent HOW MUCH for that, and Boy-Howdy-Ill-never-make-that-stupid-mistake-again moments.

Maybe Im just the only guy who has made mistakes where budgets are concerned or, just maybe, other folks dont look at their budgets with the same critical eye or dont care to share their WTF moments with the public at large.

Of course, the downside of not being self-critical or not sharing your budgetary lapses of judgement when posting your budgets and thoughts on what boats, stuff, and cruising actually costs is you send the message that your budget is what boats, stuff and cruising should cost and folks reading your budgets will think thats the best they can do.

What we need is more talk about boat and cruising budgets with hindsight sans the rose-colored Ray Bans.

Just saying...

Listening to Hanna Rae

So it goes...

Read More..