There are lots of stories that go with owning a boat, and one of them has to do with the types of people that own boats. I believe that after observing boaters for a few years, there are two distinct types of boat owners. Those that like working on boats, and those that like using their boats. I’m not that good at ship repair myself, and usually end up hiring experts for the really tricky stuff. While it’s inevitable that if you own a boat, your going to do a little bit of both, but some people seem to carry it to the extreme.
There’s was one fella I knew, that decided he and his wife were going to retire on a fourty foot plus catamaran that he would build himself. So, they sold their house, moved into an apartment, and rented out a barn. For the next five years or so, he started spending all his weekends and evenings working on this boat. I saw the vessel myself, when it was supposedly about a year away from completion. There’s no doubt, this was an impressive vessel, and it was really interesting to see it in it’s partially completed state. It was kind of like a cut-a-way of a really complicated machine.
But, I had to wonder how serious this guy was about actually sailing the boat. There’s no doubting his passion for the construction phase, but would it ever see water. Well it’s been about two years since my visit, and I can still see the hulls of that catamaran poking out of the barn. Part of me feels bad for him, but the other part want’s to make him an offer he can’t refuse, and go for a little extended sail myself.