No Whining, no sailing! (Chris)

Chris wrote: The reason this happens is that those of us in the northern latitudes have been unable to sail for several months, so we have no sailing stories to tell. But now spring is on its way and we are starting to get our boats ready. It's like the bear crawling out of hibernation. We emerge, and we encounter marine retailers, and we find things to gripe about. Chris, I'm down here at lat. 33 where we sail year 'round. Frankly, I'm glad we had this conversation on West Marine, since it has a lot of people down here really, really pissed off. A little healthy airing of grievances is what democracy is all about, and, frankly, it is the lack of participation in democracy, and the lack of griping, that has caused the current lack of government regulation induced economic crises which has had the fall out of ending participation in our sailing sport for so many.. Where we'd have a fleet of 15 under 30 sailboats in a cruiser class race ten years ago, we now have three. THREE!!! (yes,3) Another, certainly, is the big real estate moguls who have come in, torn down two story apartments (here in Marina del Rey, anyway) put in, literally, thousands of high rise condos, pushed out small boaters, yanked out the small slips, and jacked up remaining slip fees by nearly 100% over the last so many years. A lot of people have abandoned the sport cause they can afford it no moe! This is not to mention the way these mega blocks of tall building block the wind in the main channel and cast wind shadows all the way down the basins on the opposite sides, I've noticed. They are also trying to put sky scrapers at the top of the windward basins, meaning, the end to dingy sailing inside the protected waters. Ironically, the whole reason the Marina was built was to provide protected water for small craft to sail/navigate in (vs. interfering in shipping in Long Beach/San Pedro), and at the time the Congress signed off on financing the MdR project in 1954, numerous high officials swore in the documents, over and over, that there would be no real estate profiteering financed by public tax money. Sound familiar? No one likes bad news, but without it, and without acting on it to counteract the forces of evil, we go blithely onward to our sport's extinction. And that, my mates, is what is really awful! Jerry --- On Mon, 3/23/09, Chris Campbell <cl… [at] charterinternet.com> wrote: From: Chris Campbell <cl… [at] charterinternet.com> Subject: Re: [Cal_Boats] Re: Time to stop your West Marine Whining (Davidand Tom) To: Ca… [at] yahoogroups.com Date: Monday, March 23, 2009, 8:24 AM Fred Haas wrote: > Gents, > This is a list that exists primarily to enhance our enjoyment of our > old boats. That's why we participate in it. If I'm not mistaken, it > was this very subject that drove Roger Jones off the list a few years > ago. Like me, he didn't want to sign in to pick up the latest bitch. > Plenty of that in the rest of life. OK, guys, if you don't want us to gripe about West Marine, don't keep posting these objections to griping that are followed by fulsome praise of WM. The reason this happens is that those of us in the northern latitudes have been unable to sail for several months, so we have no sailing stories to tell. But now spring is on its way and we are starting to get our boats ready. It's like the bear crawling out of hibernation. We emerge, and we encounter marine retailers, and we find things to gripe about. Chris Campbell >