The other day I got one of those "we know you have choices" emails from some e-retailer I had patronized in the past. They were thanking me for being a loyal consumer. (I think it may have been two years since I bought anything from them, but they continue to massage me, I guess, in hopes of some sort of resurrection).
And it occured to me that I should do the same. So, yeah, I know you have choices. You could be watching American Idol. Or Survivor. Or Days of Our Lives. But instead you're reading about boat stuff and eyeballing amateurish photos.
Maybe it's the same rush either way: a chance to say "Wow, I could do better than that." And the opportunity to revel in harsh judgment of someone else's work. Lucky for me there's no Simon commenting here on the blog.
Well. I haven't watched much American Idol -- all right, none -- but here comes my equivalent of plugging away toward the finals.
I am varnishing and painting and sanding the fins and spars. Rudder, rudder head (paint on this one, not varnish), tiller, daggerboard, gunter yard, and boom -- plus one 'bonus piece,' the mast step, about which much as been written of late, due to a rash of mast failures for which, in some circles, an insufficiently deep mast step, or an insufficiently strong mast, has been blamed.
Can I just point out that the brochure and web site never mentioned anything about "boat design may be flawed"? Oh, I suppose every boat design, no matter how elegant, has a flaw here or there. So, hey! What if the mast bends like a pretzel? Think of it as a feature.
I am all the time reading about important aftermarket products I should buy to give my initial purchase a prayer of being useful at all. In fact I see this with yachts with six-figure prices. The minute you get one of these babies, you need to acquire a $450 Gimballed Head Ledge to prevent unseemly spills in the aft stateroom. No, I don't now what it does.
So it's reasonable that a low-cost boat kit is going to need a few, er, enhancements. You want a mast that will see you through a Southern Ocean crossing without relying on unreimbursed Australian search and rescue services? Go engineer it. It's just a kit.
I have read up on my options. A wooden mast of the birds-mouth design persuasion (it's a hollow yet sturdy wooden mast design--the high-grade Sitka spruce will run me $200). Or a carbon fiber and fiberglass layup mast that you build around a piece of electrical conduit (the kit is about $200, plus whatever Home Depot charges for the conduit). Or a carbon fiber sleeve glued onto the aluminum tubing that came in the kit -- sleeve and resin only $100.
Small sums, easily lost amidst the preposterous cost of building and maintaining a boat.
And the time it will take! To agonize over the choices, and make a decision, and work extra hours to cover the investment. And then all the construction time, and then finally the blogging time ... well, that's all time I could be watching American Idol.
Thank goodness for design flaws.
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