Taco marine rub rail number

[Noah]

Bill-all you are missing is a new FIN keel to make the boat perfect!   

[waughoo]

Bill,

That sounds an awful lot of what Ive done minus the exterior stuff.  I share your desire not to add it up: where's the fun in that?

Noah,

I also have a shoal draft but wanted a fin.  I keep telling myself that one day, I will end up in a situation where I will very much  appreciate my shoal draft. Till them, I can't see it and pretend I have a fin keel!

[PaulJacobs]

I learned a long time ago that when you truly love something it is pretty much impossible to put a price on it.  How much is the memory of your first kiss worth?  Is it $1.27, or $54.95, or $727.15, or perhaps it is priceless!  How much do you LOVE sailing?  I am now 83 and have been sailing for 68 years.  How much is it worth to be out on a sunny day, with 12 knots of wind, some whitecaps, the sails beautifully trimmed, and that magical sizzle of the water past the hull?  Is it $42.19, or $87.94, or $242.71?

I cannot predict the future.  How many more magical such days do I have left?  How much money is each of those days worth?

The Earth is about 4.5 BILLION years old.  If we are really lucky, MAYBE we live for 100 years.  Whatever it is, it is a blink in the eye of the universe.  We are so incredibly fortunate to be alive, to breathe in and out, and to be able to SAIL.  Yes, it is expensive, but simply living in 2022 is expensive.  After we are gone, if any of us could come back from the grave - just for a single day - I think we would hug and kiss our wives and children, go for one last sail, and we would pay every penny we had for the opportunity. 

Every once in a while, I run into someone who calculates the cost of absolutely every expense related to their boat for a given year, then they divide this total by the number of days they actually went sailing and are truly horrified at the resulting number.  I know, because I used to be one of them!  Finally, about 20 years ago I stopped doing what I now call "the terrible arithmetic" and consider a new engine, new standing rigging, a new furling jib, and new interior cushions to be simply the price of a love affair. 

Dr. Paul F. Jacobs
Pleiades
1990 MK 1.5 #1068
Wickford, RI

[Craig Illman]

Alex - RE: your shoal draft keel...... Fossil Bay on a less than zero tide?

[Bill Shreeves]

Bill-all you are missing is a new FIN keel to make the boat perfect!   

Noah,
Beginnings is my first sailboat after a Hobie Cat in my much younger days.  Knowing I'd be sailing in waters that can be quite shallow and being inexperienced, I was interested in a shoal draft and considered myself lucky that the boat I bought happened to be one.  I spent my 1st season sailing her on the Barnegat Bay in NJ, which is notoriously shallow & soft, where you spend most of your time with your head on a swivel for other craft and eyes on the plotter to keep a 4'-9" draft off the bottom. Sailors in the Barnegat say that if you haven't run aground, you ain't sailing.  The next season I moved to the northern Chesapeake, which is also considered shallow and I now feel spoiled.  I'm quite satisfied with my relatively rare shoal draft and don't miss the possible additional speed for the places I can otherwise go on the Chessy's tributaries.

[scgunner]

Paul,

Wow, that's deep. I was just thinking more along the lines of "if you wanna dance you gotta pay the band".

With apologies to Willie Nelson.

[glennd3]

Paul it has been a while since I thought of my first kiss, Thanks for reminding me.

[KWKloeber]

How much is the memory of your first kiss worth? 

I'm not sure of that's value, but some may think it's worth INFINITELY more if they could remember ANYTHING from way back then.  LOL. 

Or for that matter, where they left their eyeglasses.

[Bill Shreeves]

Paul,
Thank you for capturing the feelings about sailing and the price of what you love so eloquently.  For many and maybe even most of us on this forum, having these boats must ne a love.  Otherwise, would we devote so much time, energy and money caring for them?