A former boss told a story once that was super relatable.
It was about change and how it’s not always necessary… He went on about how one business changed their payment policies so that everything was done by some kind of payment card, they wouldn’t accept cash/cheque with their new system.
He was basically bitching about having to pay by card for something he usually pays for by cheque.
The super relatable service that “pulled this on him”? It was a dry dock for his boat.
Yep. Super relatable bossman. I can barely pay my bills on what I’m paid, and you’re being super relatable talking about how you store your boat in the winter. 🖕
Last year, my CEO said if we finish the project on time, he’ll buy a new truck and bring it around the office for everyone to check it out.
This would be his 20th truck he bought.
Jesus, that is even worse than a “let them eat cake” moment. This would be like Marie Antoinette eating cake in front of the starving peasants and then saying “be grateful for the opportunity to watch me eat cake!”
What happened to us? When did our spirits become so broken that the rich figuratively spit in our face and we thank them for it?
Thank you for your moisture.
Some people in charge of the world would fail the Sally-Anne test.
If you want to check out a new truck that you don’t own, just go to a dealership not looking like a bum and they might even let you drive it.
Don’t even need to not look like a bum, I’ve gone on a few test drives looking like a bum.
Yeah, I had a hobby in high school of test driving whatever sports cars they had at the various dealerships in town. I didn’t look like a bum but I was obviously a teenager. Worst case was the Mazda dealership that told me to come back another day before I could test drive a miata.
Most of them just let my friend and I take it out on our own, though the most expensive ones I drove were the WRX and Maxima (and the sales guy joined for both of those).
Actually, the worst was the Toyota matrix, where they didn’t let me drive it at all but ride while the sales guy was driving. But that was after they let us take a celica out, possibly even because of that car being used for joy riding, since I saw others taking it out, too.
As long as you don’t smell like a bum.
So relatable!
The elites don’t want you to know this but the boats at the marina are free you can take them home I have 458 boats.
Yup, if you can get it running, it’s yours.
There are a lot of people in the world. Like a loooooot. Even if the % of non normies is only like 0.01% of the population that would easily explain those boats.
This is the real answer and the reason online bubbles are so sad.
There’s so many different way to live your life and we are atrofied around a couple of equally bad options.
If there was a plague that had a 100% human infection rate and killed 87% of the people infected it would still only set back world populations to around the start of the 1900s
True. The start of the 1900s was no time for messin’ around and making babies. We had to go work in the mines
But the children yearn for the mines
No one, take them, they’re free.
Some people would be so relieved.
Boat = a hole in the water that you throw money into.
maybe that should be an addendum or footnote to the “best days of a boat owner’s life”
Boat = Bust Out Another Thousand
Sorry to call you at this hour sir, but the boat your paying to moor here, it has been stolen.
"Of my fuck, thank you! Thank the Gods!!‘’
The ideas that normies don’t sail isn’t true. I’m a normie and not rich and I started a sailing school because it’s fun as hell. You don’t need ^to ^own a boat to go sailing, you only need to know how.
Homie how tf are you sailing with no boat?
That’s the power of your imagination!
This simple trick, 🏴☠️
You wouldn’t download a boat
You wouldn’t download a boat
Not a sailboat, but still a downloaded boat. https://www.drdflo.com/pages/Projects/Printcess.html
I’m the captain now!
sail on home to the never say die flavor of simple Rick.
A friend with a boat is what you want. Same with a pool.
The best boat there is is one you don’t own!
Never sailed in a pool before, brb.
You get really good at tight turns.
First they tell me I can go sailing, now you say I can make friends… What other pie in the sky fantasies are you selling!?
It’s always good to have friends with things you want to use but don’t want to own. Another thing that falls into that category: puppies and kittens.
Hey, cheap nephlings and cousins once-removed! 👋 wanna run around and wrestle and part ways at the end of the night?!
you join a club and are crew. it’s literally how most sailing clubs function. How the hell are you supposed to race a boat if only the owner gets to be on it? The larger the boat the more the crew you need. The fees at my club for crew are $40 a year. That’s like 1/3 the cost of netflix and way more worth it. And many clubs also have a “why buy?” club where you can captain one of the fleet boats a certain number of times a year and bring your own crew.
Show up to race night with beers and sailing gloves. And the aforementioned knowledge of sailing.
Show up to race night with beers and sailing gloves
And prepare to get wet! .
Rent a boat?
They said you don’t need a boat.
You don’t need to own a boat. Apologies.
You don’t need a boat, but sailing is much easier with a boat.
you can stick a tiny american flag in your lil belly button and float on by.
Even ten years ago I was like what the heck is an American flag doing on this boat?? The American empire is like one of my least fave so can we at least use the less horrifying state flag?
The same way you live in a place that you don’t own.
OK, but you don’t see me starting an “apartment renting school”
If renting an apartment carried with it a similar significant risk of drowning, there might be a demand.
I would like to introduce you to Florida
That’s what gaming pcs with vr are for
Can confirm, especially the smaller sailboats like lasers and such. You can get going insanely fast on a windy day on the lake :)
Sunfish are the best. Why, you ask? Just scroll down until you see something… ‘jolly’
spoiler
Now, these aren’t official class sails, but who is going to be racing a sunfish anyway, right? ;) I’m also shocked at the price increase. I paid $150 for mine 10 years ago, which is 1/3 of the true class sails needed for racing.
I don’t have space for a mini sailboat right now, but these do look fun as a hobby someday :3
Just had a look at used sailing boats in Norway and there are a fair number for under $10 000. Basically cheaper than a used car or camper. I’d have one if I had somewhere to keep it.
That’s the real kicker. a place to moor your boat is often more expensive and even then maintenance costs will be a lot.
Cheap to buy maybe, but expensive to moor and maintain. A friend who bought a small second-hand yacht said his new hobby was tearing up £20 notes in a cold shower.
They say the two happiest days in a boat owners life are the day they buy their boat and the day they sell their boat.
IIRC the rule of thumb for boat costs, is that annual upkeep costs for a boat are roughly the purchase price of the boat.
That’s wildly inaccurate, even as a rule of thumb. Upkeep (excluding storage, which varies widely by location) shouldn’t be over 10% of the purchase price, unless the boat was really cheap or the boatyard doing the maintenance is crooked.
Talking US rates here, I have no experience overseas.
Fair I have zero experience owning a boat. However, if I bought a boat for $10K and my annual upkeep was only $1K I’d certainly be thrilled.
Holy shit used cars must be expensive in Norway. I live in Estonia and my first used car was 550 euros 10 years ago. Nowadays the same model (early 90s Audi) could probably be had for 900-1100.
The thing to consider is that while my crappy old Audi received less than 200 euros in maintenance and repairs in the first year, yachts are said to cost you roughly 10% of the initial purchase price per year in maintenance and mooring costs and I doubt those under 10k yachts were 10k new.
You can get a car that runs for around €3000 in Bergen or Oslo, but used cars get progressively more expensive the further north you go. But getting work done on a car is the expensive thing. I payed around €5000 for my car 3 years ago and last year I spent €3000 getting it passed the control. The problem is that Norway has a harsh coastal climate (salt spray, constantly going above and below freezing etc), and shit roads outside of Oslo. I’ve broken 2 springs, cracked my oil sump, and punctured a tyre just because of shitty roads. And because Norway is outside the EU we pay toll on everything we order from outside Norway, which is most things (including car parts) because Norway doesn’t actually produce anything).
I mean most of that is the same here in Estonia. Have to work on your own cars if you’re buying used. We salt the roads and getting work done is expensive. Though I did not know you guys had tolls for EU goods, I thought being in the EEA took care of that.
Nah we just have to follow EU regulations without any of the benefits or ability to influence policy.
Interesting, toll.no calculator says there’s no toll on car parts, period. Wikipedia says there’s no toll (customs fees) on EU goods other than food and beverages (which EU subsidises so they would be too cheap for Norwegian market otherwise)
Do you perhaps mean the 25% VAT? Most countries have that and it’s not specific to imports. If I go to a grocery store and buy milk, that includes 22% VAT in the price. It’s just that when you order from abroad, you may have to declare values and pay VAT and if the store you ordered from did a fuckup and paid VAT to their own country instead of declaring that they sold to Norway, you might get double taxed.
Ok, I just looked it up on the post office website and it seems you’re correct. I guess it must have been changed recently.
Well then, you’re now free to drive shitboxes until ICEs are completely banned!
It’s fun, frustrating and best of all, cheap as fuck until you stumble on the wrong shitbox (any mid 00s Audi for an example)
I remember a craiglist post (from like 2000s) that was for a small boat. It was like $600 a month on a payment plan, or $30000 total.
I was in college looking for a place to rent, just a bed. And I really thought about living on a small boat.
It’s possible to get a small boat (couple of berths, simple galley and a shitter) for around $5000 total in Norway. But as with all things this gets progressively more expensive the further north you go. But overall boats are not that expensive here because there are a lot of them. (Supply and demand)
I have a friend who grew up on the coast and her family always sailed for fun.
When she got divorced she bought a sailboat and traveled for a bit in it. She then parked it at a marina and lived in it for so many years close to her kids and grandkids. She paid $100K for boat and her marina fees were $300/month. The boat was paid off with the divorce settlement.
The cheapest 1 bedroom apartment to rent nearby was $3500/month for less square footage than her boat. The cheapest small house was around $1,000,000 or around $6000/ month at the time. The homes around the marina were all priced at several million dollars.
We met someone like that and they were considered homeless by the city, lol. I think they were annoyed at that.
Seattle is full of people that live on boat as an affordable alternative. You can’t be squeamish about insects or get seasick easily because of the storms. I couldn’t do it myself, but I’ve known quite a few that have.
What kinda insects we talking about here?
Water spiders, gnats, etc. You know, bugs you see in a boathouse or in the bathrooms around water.
Why would you assume that I spend time on boathouses or aquatic bathrooms?
Lol, I assume everyone has been camping near a lake or something. That’s what I meant by bathrooms on water. If you have ever been by a pier, look underneath, that’s a good tell as well.
A Space Noodle is a relative of a Pool Noodle, is it not?
Totally different.
Eh, water navy, space navy, close enough; I could see how some would get confused
You’re in a thread asking about boat related stuff
Yeah, asking questions about boats.
You haven’t asked a single question about boats, only about insects.
We don’t really have gnats here in Seattle. It’s great.
So we only get water spiders and etc.?
I’ve never seen those here, either. And they don’t sound like much of a pest since they wouldn’t be flying around biting you.
me writing “the ocean :)” as my permanent address on government documents
This is the right answer. It’s an RV on water but it doesn’t disintegrate (working as intended, that) like an RV or fifth wheel.
but it doesn’t disintegrate
Lmao, my little sailboat would like to have a word with you. Maybe it could, too, if I hadn’t plastered it over with enough lacquer to make a latex sub’s dreams come shooting out of their happy hole. The ‘fiberglass-on-top-of-plywood’ construction is an absolute bitch if any moisture makes its way to the plywood.
What’s a fifth wheel, in this context?
Large trailer camper that is pulled by a ‘5th wheel’ hitch, like the ones found on semi trucks or heavy duty pickups.
Travel trailer.
A city of 250,000 people could have 250 boats (that’s enough for a marina or two) and it would be 0.01% of the population (the one percent of the one percent). That seems to not really be that crazy.
And if you consider that a small percentage of the boat population may have 2 or even 3 boats, than it gets even less weird.
I also think that if you live near water, people are generally at least a little more likely to get a boat instead of a nice car or bigger house or other luxury item.
Edit: I was off by an order of magnitude so it would be 0.1% not 0.01, however, I think the broader point is still valid.
But 0.01% of 250,000 is 25.
(Sorry 🙁)
Yea that’s my mistake, but even scaled up an order of magnitude I think it still works. That’s still 1 in 10 one percenters.
You’re also forgetting all the people who live on a boat instead of buying or renting property. I live in a coastal state, and some marinas work like trailer parks, where you pay the moorage fee and they supply water/sewer/electric to your boat.
What about fibre link?
I don’t know of any nearby marinas that offer internet connection. You’re pretty much stuck with satellite if you want reliable internet on a boat.
Crap, I was planning on confusing the geolocation algorithms by moving my server around.
Guess I’ll have to figure something else out.
Sailboats aren’t prohibitively expensive for a normie, especially if you buy a used one. If you look at the large empty houses near every harbor though, you’ll see a better sign of the wealth disparity. The rich own multiple houses worth millions each and they seem to be rarely used while many people can’t afford a starter home now.
Buying a boat is cheap, owning one not so much. Between marina fees and maintenance it adds up really fast.
As my dad would say, “A boat is a hole in the water you throw money into.” Boats are cool and fun if you like to sail, but between maintenance costs, mooring fees, the cost to take it out of the water and store it at a boat yard once the season is over, scrape the barnacles off, repaint it, etc. it’s not a cheap endeavor.
That’s why the only reasonable way to own a boat you can’t trailer is to live on it full-time.
My dad used to own a sailboat, which was a high point for someone squarely middle class. We’re talking a 44 ft sailboat.
These things are holes in the water who the fuck wants a boat
How do you make a small fortune?
Start with a large fortune and buy a boat.
I used to work at a fish market, and one of the fishermen we dealt with once won a large sum of money from a big fishing tournament. When they asked him what he was gonna do with the money, his response was, “Keep fishing until it’s all gone.”
Bust
Out
Another
Thousand
As the saying goes:
The two best days of a boat owner’s life are the day they buy the boat, and the day they sell the boat
Meh, a boat is a hole in the water to dump money into, a car is a hole in the road, and a house is a hole in the ground. At least the boat combines the advantages of the other two.
At the height of being poor in like '83 or so (mortgage rates to 17%; just ponder that) we panick-moved to a smaller town with a union job but found a fixer house with an attached shop.
Dad, ever the salesman and skilled labourer, would do work for people in exchange for wood-working tools: Old window Jenkins would part with Lester’s Table Saw if Dad re-tiled the shower.
So we got tools. And he traded for plywood and plans. And suddenly we had a dory he could fit on top of this '75 econoline150 van. And fishing was great. But it was a lot of rowing this pig of a boat.
So he modded it with a dagger-board and a mast port. Took him 5 min to rig it and he was set for fishing.
Those summers camping because we couldn’t afford to do anything else but at least gas was cheap, they were awesome.
I think these people just have shiny boats, which are too expensive. If you want to find them, they’re finishing the Penske file so they can still afford exorbitant Slip fees and dream of Taking the Boat Out with the estranged family members who will then love Dad again and make up for all this toil. Dude needs a cheap ugly van and a wallowing pig of a dory to ‘sail’ around a lake in the woods; aim smaller and actually go make memories.
At the height of being poor in like '83 or so (mortgage rates to 17%; just ponder that)
FWIW A mortgage payment at 17% interest on the $20,000 my parents paid for my childhood three bedder in 1980 was cheaper than a single mortgage payment i make today.
Bring Out Another Thousand
the upkeep alone - painting scraping replacing the anode every fuckin year… it’s a fuckton of work for a ‘fun hobby’
The costs involved with boats is why I have a kayak instead.
I have two boat friends. One has a 20’ sailboat, it’s just under yacht size. The other has a dingy he built in his garage. The dingy gets far more use.
I do wish I had storage nearer the sea for it though. It’s about 20-30 min walk from where we live now and need to get it moved to our new house at some point. Don’t really have a suitable spot for it to go yet. Or it would be a pain to get in/out.
time to make a friend on the beach you can stash it with :D
I have wondered if there are any garages nearby. Not usually the cheapest of options though, and massively oversized for what you need to store a single kayak. Low 5 figures and may not even be in a good location.
I used to dream of living on a sailboat. Then a friend of mine who owned one took me out for a ride and I was so seasick I had to jump into the water and be towed back to the dock. So much for that shit.
Some people don’t even really sail them but live in them.
Boats aren’t even that expensive everywhere. In America they’re priced as luxury objects for the richest of the rich from what I’ve heard. Sailing as a way of traveling is actually a kinda cheap and rough activity, like camper vans. Not very “rich” stuff at all. My grandparents had a 30 footer and it wasn’t exactly luxurious, definitely camper van vibes. They’d sailed it all over around Europe though.
A new camper van in the US can easily cost 6 figures.
And a used one can easily be had for less than 15,000
I can’t even get a used car with less than 100,000 miles for less than $15,000.
Uhh you’re not looking hard enough. Hell there are pickup trucks for less than 15k with less than 100k miles.
Where I live used pickups are the worst, costing almost as much as buying new.
Yea that seems to have calmed down a bit recently though.
I bought a used car several years ago. I put 70k miles on it. It is now worth $4000 more than what I paid for it. This shit is ridiculous.
I once bought one for less than $1000… Granted it needed a lot of work to get roadworthy, but about another $2500 later, it had good tires and could drive without overheating, and more importantly, stop too. Girlfriend I had at the time made me give it up, I still resent her for it.
Yeah, everyone’s got a camper van everywhere because of how cheap they are
Actually not everyone has a camper van everywhere because not everyone desires or has the use for a camper van.
Where I live, I’ve heard lot fees and utilities or what ever are so expensive, may as well rent an apartment
Camper vans, mobile homes, small sailboats, all wall street rich guy shit, right? Even a CEO is lucky to afford a used camper van.
Have you been to southern California?
Nah I’m uncultured swine and have never left Canada
My dad got a relatively seaworthy one for around £5000. It’s the maintenance and marina fees that cost.
I’m kinda one of them. Well my dad is. He’s typical of the boat owners I’ve met over the years. Boomer, business owner, white. He bought the first boat with a buddy in their late 20s, cuz that’s when he had enough disposable income after they could afford a house, a rental property, two kids, two cars, a dog and a golf course membership. They had a falling out and my dad bought out his buddy. Three or four boats later I look after the boat, and do all the maintenance. My dad’s in his 70s, he can’t take the boat out on his own anymore. We go fishing 5 or 6 times a year. Moorage is $6000 a year, fuel is $2000, insurance $3000, maintenance at least $2000. Maintenance would be 10x that if I didn’t do most of the work myself.
How much difference would it be if you compare it by renting a boat for those 5 or 6 times a year?
We could do some absolutely amazing charters for the money we spend on the boat. It’s something we have been talking about recently. The engines on the boat are 25 years old, if/when they die my dad wants to replace them to the tune of $40,000-$50,000. I’m trying to talk him into selling it and we plan a couple really nice fishing trips per year. I think one of the reasons he spends so much on it is that it’s one of the only things we have in common. We only really spend time together on the boat.
They’re not that expensive, at least not up-front. A guy I know bought a sailboat for a few thousand dollars, but the catch was that it was almost 50 years old and needed a lot of repairs. He saved money by doing the repairs himself, but the $400 per month slip fee was still too much for him eventually and he sold the boat.
I picked up a fifty year old English built sailboat (Westerly Centaur) for all of $500. My local yacht club (more a working man’s boat club than the posh social group that the name suggests). Prior owner fell up on hard times in the middle of a refit and stopped paying storage fees. I picked her up from the club after they placed a lien on it. Since the club is full of powerboat owners, none of them were interested in buying a sailboat.
I’m working to finish the refit, doing the majority of the work myself. Helps that the club fees about to about $1100 a year. $400 a month would be excessive if I weren’t living on the boat full time… And refitting a boat while living on her sounds like a miserable experience.
You got the right idea I think. The boats are all smooshed together in a Marina so it’s natural for people to overestimate the number of boats relative to the number of people. There are way way way more people then there are boats. Honestly that’s the appeal of boats, the ability to go somewhere there aren’t a lot of people because most people don’t own boats.
For similar reasons, I would like to build a house in the form of a 300’ tall wizard tower in a random suburban neighborhood. But those bastards down at the planning division won’t approve my plans!
There’s a tower house out where I used to work. Built in the 70s I think by a Microsoft exec.
Only about 100’ tall though I believe.
It apparently is an airbnb now: the “Union Skyhouse”.
Dude, you want to get together? I’ve been planning my wizard tower for years. All I want is a parapet around the top with a telescope out there. The best part is that finding an area with low/no light pollution means there won’t be dang pesky jerks that want to keep a certain look to the neighborhood.
Burn all the grass around the tower, and have bands of roving dogs running wild around it.
Socialism is when the planning department won’t approve your 300’ wizard tower on a quarter acre lot. Save us, von Mises!
My friend bought a single mast boat for £50 off a guy at his local. The dude had bought another bigger boat and just wanted away with the smaller one.
As a marine engineer who worked and both new build and refit side of the business, I’d say whatever price you pay for the boat itself, be prepared to pay same amount in 5 years for maintenance and marina fees etc.
boats aren’t expensive, especially the older they are. fixing boats properly is expensive, but you also don’t really need to do that. My dad had a racing boat when I was a kid, it cost him $400… I bought a dinghy last year for $200. That’s less than the cost of a game console. And it costs literally nothing to go take it out on the water.
My mom grew up in the '40s and '50s and she told me many times about the surplus PT boat her dad had bought at the end of WWII which the family would take out for boating trips. I was like holy shit a PT (Patrol Torpedo) boat! These things had three Packard engines and could make 45 knots. Later on as an adult I discovered that it was actually just a pontoon boat, one of the things the army would use to make temporary bridges over rivers and that could only go about 3 mph. My mom had just thought “PT” stood for “Pon Toon” so that’s what she called it. It turns out she had always wondered what the hell John F. Kennedy had been doing in the Pacific fighting the Japanese in a pontoon boat.
Later on, I then learned that my mom’s uncle had actually bought a surplus Air/Sea Rescue boat after the war. This boat was basically a PT boat, just with two of the Packard engines instead of three; since it was 15 feet longer than a PT boat it could also do 45 knots. So it turns out my mom did have this childhood experience of rocketing around the ocean at unbelievable speeds. Her uncle ended up selling the boat after the engine room caught fire for the third time (something these engines were notorious for) and we have no idea what happened to it after that. These boats cost about $190K new and he had somehow acquired it for $10K - I expect there was some shady dealing going on there.
Nice read
And it costs literally nothing to go take it out on the water.
You sound like a boat salesperson.
They did say a dinghy so that would be accurate. Anything you can carry is going to be very cheap. Anything you can’t will cost a lot more. Think my kayak was a bit over £1000. Costs nothing to use it. But currently can’t store it at my new house and ideally want to change that at some point. It won’t fit through the gate very easily and I think its a bit heavy to carry on my own.
Tell me how it’s incorrect.
Never said it was.
fixing boats properly is expensive, but you also don’t really need to do that
Yeah, this sounds like really bad advice…
Depends on what you’re using your boat for. A dinghy on a lake doesn’t need the same level of repair that an oceangoing vessel does.
The two best days in a boaters life:
The day they buy their boat; and the day they sell their boat.
My uncle used to own a fairly large shrimp/crabbing boat, and he ran a fishing crew for nearly 20 years. He said “They say the best days in a boat owners life are the day you buy, and the day you sell. There is a Third option, the day you realize you can rent you boat to a crew, and not have to deal with most of the issues, and still make money.” Yeah, he eventually was in too bad of shape to continue, so he started renting his boat out to crews, they covered fuel, and short term maintenance, while he was responsible for the big stuff. Made a nice side income from it, and started a plumbing business.
the day you realize you can rent you boat to a crew, and not have to deal with most of the issues, and still make money.”
Sounds like parasitic behavior to me. Literal rent-seeking.
In a way yes, however this is rather common for small scale commercial fishing. Boats like that are ridiculously expensive, so a lot of people branching out on their own often rent until they can afford a down payment on their own boat. The loans for which are far more predatory, unfortunately.
This guy boats. Here’s another classic:
BOAT: Bust out another thousand.
