2012 Season Underway !

Took the winter cover off yesterday beginning the 40th season for my Pop-Top ! Hoping for an early launch this year. Trying to keep the to-do list short. Took a walk around the yard. The number of abandoned boats, boats for sale, or boats whose owners have not put in for a few years now in increasing exponentially. Sad to see. My yard has been transformed from a storage facility into a graveyard. Even the yard next-door seems to have more boats piling-up. Chicago is opening a new 1000 slip harbor this. Harbor occupancy continues to drop so I'm not sure where the city expects these boats to come from. Steve This e-mail may contain privileged or confidential information. If you are not the intended recipient: (1) you may not disclose, use, distribute, copy or rely upon this message or attachment(s); and (2) please notify the sender by reply e-mail, and then delete this message and its attachment(s). Underwriters Laboratories Inc. and its affiliates disclaim all liability for any errors, omissions, corruption or virus in this message or any attachments.

On 3/15/2012 7:44 AM, Urbanski, Steven J. wrote: > > > Took a walk around the yard. The number of abandoned boats, boats > for sale, or boats whose owners have not put in for a few years now in > increasing exponentially. Sad to see. > One thing you can do is try to interest new sailors in buying the boats cheap. You could help the newbies do an informal survey to avoid the real disasters. Of course, no boat is ever "cheap" in the long run, but most activities that people pursue have regular expenses. Acquiring an unwanted boat at a low price may allow people to become sailors when they can't do it by the new-boat route. It's a kind of golden opportunity. This sort of gets us back to the shop-class discussion. A lot of people just can't do their own work any more. It's either unwillingness or fear of tackling new tasks without any skills. For the latter, some of us with acquired skills can help by providing support and instruction. For some people who've never done any manual work, even that might not be enough. For others, a friendly advisor may give them the confidence to take on the work. When I look at most of the yachting magazines, I see an understanding that the smallest, most minimal vessel starts at 40 feet, and then you work upward toward tolerable living. They are pushing 60 and 70 foot "daysailers." I just read a Bob Perry review of one of those with electric main and jib sheet winches. He was mildly amused by the concept. Maybe you can snag some folks who want to take a cheaper route into sailing and who might buy some of those unused boats. Chris Campbell