Kinda wanna get a sailboat

posted: *feb 27 2022*

Simple as.

I've been playing too much Sea of Thieves lately. And seeing the "Busy Doing

Nothing" book from some of the merveilles.town members floating around isn't

helping the small seed in my brain garden that is currently pitching to grow

up into a full-sized "Man I really want a boat" dream.

Speaking of.. I need to buy that book. It actually looks really, really

interesting to read a modern travel log of people sailing across the Pacific

Ocean. Spoiler alert, they didn't die! They -lived-! I guess the ocean isn't

all that bad to a bone-dry landlubber like me, who still considers the ocean a

recreational space and not a travel medium.

Finding lakes, rivers, and even oceans somewhere in the vicinity of where I'm

at in the US is.. less trivial than it could be. That accessibility doesn't

help matters in regards to me reasoning my way out of this dumb idea. "All you

have to do is tow it up to a lake, Donut... it'll be easy..."

The plan

I figure I could start small. Take a little dinghy or a 5-meter boat out on

a local lake or reservoir, float around and get the feel of how such a machine

is meant to function, and then either decide "Well that was a waste of 2 grand"

or realize "Yeah. I need to move closer to bigger bodies of water".

That's one thing that attracts me to sailing. They're still -way- cheaper than

their equivalent in airplanes.

A brief sidebar on obsolescence

We tend to think that cars - modern ones, anyway - only last a few years before

they start getting groggy, problematic and continually more expensive to

maintain; an axiom that results in many people (at least here in the US) to get

comfy with the idea of buying a car, driving it for 100,000 miles or less, and

then selling it to somebody further down the totem pole and buying a new one.

Which is crazy for all sorts of reasons, but that's not what this post is

about.

Airplanes and boats seem to handle quite differently than cars, in the sense

that we have millennia of experience, rules, and inherited convention around

boats: how they work, what you do with them, and what must be done to maintain

the seaworthiness of a given vessel is something that many people, for untold

years, have been working on and figuring out. By no means are we -done- with

such an art (for I'd say it is) but sailing on the rivers and oceans of the

world is not a new idea. But we are definitely relying on the methods and means

that people have used for centuries, if not longer, to navigate the water. We

have new tools and new toys, but by-and-by we seem to stick with a structure

and culture that works. Nobody likes floating out in the ocean after capsizing

their sailboat. So there are rules on what to do and when, and how to maintain

and fix a boat.

For crying out loud, I'm seeing ads for boats that are a century old! Never you

mind the Ship of Theseus issue (how "original" are these 100-year-old rigs?);

it's the concept that if somebody tried to sell me a 100-year-old automobile

I'd probably sign a last will and testament before I took it out on the

interstate.

Given the proper effort and paperwork, a century-old boat is just as seaworthy

now as it was on its maiden voyage. Perhaps even more so, given the new

materials and processes and tools we have available to make the effort safer

and more reliable.

Airplanes, on the other hand: barely a century and some old by this point. But

they're also insanely more complex and dangerous in terms of their design,

maintenance and usage. Which means that from almost the beginning (except

for the flying circus people) flying was generally an agreement between the

acceptable risk of falling out of the sky, and being careful and skilled

enough in a very new kind of machine, in a very new kind of operating area,

to do what few over mankind's history have ever done.

And now it's regulated to hell so damn bad that if you wind up crashing,

statistically it was probably your fault. That's not to be insensitive to

the concept of people who die while flying planes, it's just a statement on

how much research and development and policymaking has gone into making the

airways a much safer place (per capita) than driving on the road is at a much

slower speed (comparatively) for much smaller distances.

Both of these digressions meaning that I could get ahold of a Cessna Skyhawk

made in the 1970's, and given the airframe was in decent condition and properly

maintained, I could probably fly it with little or no additional work. I could

get a boat made in that same year for a fraction of the price, sometimes as

much as 50% from what I've seen (a Cessna could go for 10-15K, and a 10-meter

sloop could go for about half that, depending).

Try and getting a car from the 1970's that's A: functional, B: capable of

passing an emissions test, and C: will last you more than a few years without

comparatively expensive maintenance.

I dunno about you Euros, but here in the United States, playing around with

old cars and actually -using- them is something ideally done by the well-off,

because they can make it work; the average teenager trying to "restore" a

Firebird from his dad's high school graduation year is foolhardy at worst

and probably a few thousand dollars deep in parts and repairs at best.

Back to the main event

I don't think I'm inherently capable of doing things small when I know that I

can do the big version, given enough time and resources. So this wouldn't be a

simple case of getting a small boat to play puddle pirate in at local lakes;

I'd eventually want to take my craft (or a bigger, more seaworthy one) out on

the big water, coastal at first and then maybe beyond.

I might do it as a way to go fishing and spend more time outside. Granted, it

would be a wildly inconsistent hobby; not to mention the fact I've not even

begun to consider how on earth I'd haul such a thing to and from the marina,

assuming I don't want to just permanently moor it somewhere and pay out the

nose for a berth at some way-too-over-my-pay-grade yacht club.

So until I went for the big time and either moved closer to the sea, or

otherwise got some of my logistics sorted out in a heretofore unknown way,

I'm basically stuck with a hard line at the process of taking Donut's Boat

from Point A, of Donut's Dwelling, to Point B, which is the Water Where the

Boat is Supposed to Be. The WWTBISTB, as it were. (pronounced wuhw-tuh-bist

buh)

Real life gets in the way though

The joy of all of this is the fact that within a few years I could likely snag

a pretty decent remote job of some sort, meaning that I'd be able to take this

terrible, rotten, hardly-a-fit-for-me idea for a spin in earnest.

But it's not all sunshine and roses, unfortunately. Real life is a thing.

I'm happy where I am in terms of salary, but it also does mean that I come into

the office as a general rule. Kinda hard to play puddle pirate in a sailboat if

I have that Teams call at 1:30 and then an in-person meeting at 3. So I'd have

to figure out some way to either become independently wealthy (extremely

unlikely, without dirty money and things I'd probably have to stomach doing)

-- I'm being hypothetical, dear Enn Ess Ayy agent, it's hypothetical --

which therefore leaves me to the other option, which is be a normal human being,

a plebian among the patricians, and grind out a living somewhere in the tech

industry like I've been struggling (and finally succeeding in the last few

months) to do for the last nearly half-decade.

So somewhere among the ocean of half-baked ideas, companies with little or no

true stake in making meaningful use of technical talent, and other "bullshit

jobs" that the market is currently overflowing with, I'd have to find one that

would be okay with putting me out to pasture doing a project or something,

reporting in textually or over video every few days (at most), and otherwise

leave me alone to go float in my boat.

The funniest part?

Last time I went out on the water was a whale-watching trip a few years ago.

I was barely maintaining my lunch by the end., I was coked out on SO much

Dramamine. I kept it down because I'm no chump of a pastry, but I am

certain were the seas any choppier that day (bad waters in the harbor and

along most of the coast) I would have kindly donated whatever I ate back

to the floor of the galley.

Not to mention the fact that I'm just gonna be labeled (rightfully so) a crazy

hippie for trying to figure out how to sail a boat as a person who has no

history doing so, no lineage indicating such, and no abject -reason- to do so.

This is such a bad idea. I can't wait to experiment with it in a few years. :D

Contact me

Comments? Questions? They go here.

wholesomedonut at tuta dot io