Quote:
Originally Posted by Giulietta
you guys with your surveyors are soo funny...
we here have none of that, really we don't....if you're dumb enough to get fooled by someone selling you a boat..your problem...most people that buy a sailboat, know minimally what they need to know to see if it's good or not...if they can't there is allways a friend that helps
here anyone buying a boat does their own "survey"..none of that stuff here...
Looks like stuff to protect you from you, by not having you do what you should do.....makes sense???
Imagine if to get my boat insured I neded to get a surveyor...ahaha that's funny...you guys are soo lazy...even need to hire a guy to look at a bota for you...
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SD, Good info in your post as well as some of the follow-ups from others.
Giu, I actually agree with you to a point.
It wasn't too many years ago that sailors, at least the ones I knew, were in general a lot more competent and self sufficient than the average boater today. At least that's my observation.
There are probably a lot of very different reasons for this. Among them would be the development of the
GPS system or the fact that there is a glut of cheap used small vessels.
Also, I think that insurance has help to make it easier for people to neglect their personal responsibility.
I see cases often where someone expects the insurance to pay for a new
rig when the cause of failure was a 20+ year old chainplate or U-bolt that caused the dismasting. Even people that are in the marine industry, used their boat hard, should have known better and should have inspected and replaced the offending parts.
Anyway, there are a lot more people on the water these days and there is nothing necessarily wrong with that. Hell, it drives an industry. A lot of people make their livings based partly on the fact that anyone can just go buy a boat and go sailing in relative comfort and safety without having to go to the trouble of becoming sailors.
Boy, when I read that, it sounds harsh. I don't really mean it that way.
Sailing, Cruising, Boating, Yachting, whatever you want to call it, is a lot more obtainable than it used to be.
Technology has made learning how to do real navigation unnecessary. There are so many incredible products and services out there we don't really have to do much ourselves anymore.
EPIRBs and the Coast Guard are a pretty good backup plan if you stay close to shore, right?
I applaud SD's efforts to get people to stick their heads into those lockers and wiggle those shafts and to climb that
rigging and knock on their hulls with little plastic hammers. And I would venture to guess that many of the participants here at Sailnet are pretty handy. But I fear that in general, the vast majority of boaters in the US would have a real hard time performing tasks that a boater 30 years ago would have considered basic.
