Someone who is not your friend...

Part of the problem of navigating life in a consumerist society is that, pretty much, everyone selling you something is only in it for the profit. That said, there's nothing wrong with making a profit because, by and large, profit within reason is a good thing.

Where it gets nuts is when profits exceed fair & reasonable, and start looking a whole lot like gouging or theft.

Here's an example I happened across yesterday while trying to buy some anti-fouling for my dinghy as there didn't seem to be what I wanted on island.

Pettit SR21 is a hard anti-fouling that makes sense for a hard dinghy as it has a thin film, it's easy/quick to apply, and it's hard so scrubbing is non-problematic. Normally it's a bit too expensive for my tastes as it retails for $69.99 a quart but West Marine currently has it on sale for $35.88 so I said to myself  "That's what I want".

Of course, as it turned out, WM won't ship it to me because I'm in a non-incorporated territory and it appears that the powers that be at WM don't realize we are part of the US of A. Perhaps we could have shipped it with our freight forwarder but as that adds another $20-$30 to the transaction it makes it more than what I want to spend.

And, yes, dear reader, I'm frugal/cheap.

Anyway, since I now had an overwhelming desire to put some SR21 on the bottom of my dinghy, I started looking further afield with no luck until I got to eBay...

eBay is a rather interesting place and I used to buy quite a bit of film stuff, marine gear, and musical instruments from eBay sellers but do it less these days as it seems to be mostly greed-head dealers selling stuff for more than it's worth.

But, as it happens, there was a guy selling SR21 and he'd even ship it to me. Sounds good until you do the math...

$139.88 + $19.99 = $159.87

That's for one quart of anti-fouling that is supposed to retail for $69.99 and it's as far from a fair or reasonable price as you can get without it becoming armed robbery.

Sadly, just about every time I've gone to eBay in the last couple of years this sort of thing appears to be the norm rather than the exception where boat stuff is concerned. 

It's important to remember that marine trades are seldom your friend and if you're lucky enough to have found one who is, cherish it like you would a Unicorn. Far too many people looking for boat gear consider that the prices are going to be better than some marine vendor like West Marine whose economic pressure on the industry and consumers is both controlling as well as dastardly. However, even they don't measure up to the ripoff artists who inhabit eBay. The bottom line is that eBay is not your friend and should be treated with suspicion and do your homework before going there in search of deals.

Just sayin'...

DIY and VolksCruising...

A couple of decades or so back while living in in St Thomas there was a really nice couple who'd bought a famous (it had featured in a movie with Bing Crosby) albeit semi-derelict Alden schooner sight unseen.

At the time I was working at a local marine consignment store and the couple came in often looking to buy needful items for their boat and pumping us for advice.

You know what they say about free advice.

The couple while knowing zilch about boats and on a shoestring budget still managed to do a lot of work on the boat and seemed to be on a roll when they made the mistake about bringing in a local rigger to help them with their rig.

A couple of weeks after they showed up with a shopping list provided by the rigger that, to me at least, was some kind of interesting. The first thing that caught my attention was that there were a lot of things that just did not belong on an old wooden schooner. So I asked  which boat the shopping list was for.

They answered that the rigger had laid out a whole new rig as he had access to one of the old America's Cup boats and could reuse some of their old rod rigging...

Now, St Thomas is a pretty small place and the rigger in question was somewhat infamous for doing bad jobs. He seldom actually did any real rigging work leaving that to his crew who were more or less clueless and paid sub-minimum wages. The clients, of course, paid $75 bucks an hour for each of those sub-minimum wage minions. So hardly surprising that a lot of projects turned into clusterfucks.

I pointed this out to the couple and recommended that they hit the local book store and buy The Riggers Apprentice by Brion Toss and that the book would answer all of their questions in getting their rig fixed right. Soon after they were DIYing the rig with a bit of help from Brion on the phone when needful.

Not too long after the boat was doing the daysail charter ting and earning money.

I mention this story because the marine trades in general are not your friend. Some are simply inept while others are, at best, just black hearted villains who will steal you blind. Whichever sort you're dealing with be assured that the only thing most care about is what's in your wallet.

Worse yet is the fact that far too often marine tradesmen work in concert with each other. For instance that nice helpful surveyor tells you your rig is shot and sends you to a rigger to sort out your problems. Sadly, far too often that surveyor didn't really find anything wrong and is going to receive a kickback or part of the damage that the rigger will inflict on your budget.

I'll point out that in this sort of scenario the too often used adage "You get what you pay for!" is true but in a very negative way.

So, the whole VolksCruiser vibe is really just about accessible knowledge and accumulating the needed skill-set to keep your boat running. Well that and avoiding dastardly assholes.

Larry and Lin Pardey pretty much coined the perfect VolksCruiser mantra when they said something along the lines of...

"If you can't fix it, it doesn't belong on your boat!"

Slow going on the Endeavour front...

I've been waiting on a quote for a forty-foot section of mast extrusion for the Endeavour but, as expected the rigging company who happens to be the purveyor of said extrusion...

Boy do I hate dealing with some marine businesses.

It's not that I can't live with slow and inept but do admit to a certain exasperation with just plain rude and nasty.

Really, how hard is it to answer two questions of whether or not they have forty-feet in stock and, if they do, what it costs per foot.

That said, the cost of mast extrusions and the needful bits to make up a mast being what they are these days the only really affordable way to go is to either find an acceptable used mast or to build your own.

Though it really would be nice to have the quote on a new mast for comparitive purposes...

I'm not going to hold my breath in the meantime.