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Cruisers not as friendly etc. anymore

7332 Views 109 Replies 27 Participants Last post by Don L, 2 mo ago

Don L

Discussion Starter · 3 mo ago

Needed a small help item this week. There is close to 400 boats anchored here. The help I need I bet 100 of those boats could have provided and it would have taken less than 5 minutes time. Got no one offering and I even even was offering to pay. Just a few years past I would have been turning down people.

Last week was at an anchorage with a well known cruiser beach. Last time just 2 years ago there were regular sundowners etc. get togethers there. This visit in 4 days there I never saw anyone other than us even go to the beach.

6 years ago on my first year I collected a stack a couple inches high of boater cards. Now for every 10 I give out I might get 1 as newer cruisers just aren't interested in them. Boaters just don"t really even seem to interested in getting together.

The last couple of weeks in various anchorages I have noticed cruisers don't care how close they fly by your boat in the anchorage or how big a wake they made with their dinghies. All they care about is getting to beach bat faster. Just a few year ago it was only the super yachts that acted like owned the water and to hell with other boaters.

Now days it is almost common for someone to take up 3/4 of the small dinghy dock because they needed to lock their boat for and aft.

Maybe it is just me.

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MikeOReilly

· #9 · 3 mo ago

Go somewhere else. There's lots of cruising areas where people are still people -- IOW, good, kind, generous, and always willing to help. What you speak of is foreign to my experience with cruising and cruisers.

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MikeOReilly

· #17 · 3 mo ago (Edited)

MarkofSeaLife said:
The world has changed.
Previously we were all together hating our rsspuctive governments.
Then we learned to hate each other because the Governments told us to.

You think people are less friendly? Yup. Probably right. They taught us to hate people with a different vaccination opinion. They taught us to hate people with a different political opinion.
They taught us to hate.
We all learned very well.

I appreciate the sentiment Mark, but I think you're wrong when you look at the broader human perspective. You want political hatred, just look to the middle ages, or the Inquisition period, or the tribal interactions of our Native Peoples, or even the Cold War period. By all historical standards, we live in a far more tolerant and loving world than has ever existed.

Not to say there can't be backsliding, and perhaps we're experiencing one right now when people are fed so much disinformation about differing economic perspectives, or yes, the science behind vaccines. I think the Internet, and specifically so-called "social media" (which is anything but social), has pushed us back a few paces.

Regardless, we must not be fooled into thinking our immediate experience represents anything but a blip in time. From any objective standard, we live in the most loving and accepting time humans have ever known -- and this is most especially true of our western developed nations.

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MikeOReilly

· #25 · 3 mo ago

In this case of lack of help, it could also be the so-called "bystander effect" at play:

"The bystander effect occurs when the presence of others discourages an individual from intervening in an emergency situation, against a bully, or during an assault or other crime. The greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is for any one of them to provide help to a person in distress. People are more likely to take action in a crisis when there are few or no other witnesses present."

This is another reason to up-anchor and move somewhere else.

The world is a big place. From your posts, I get the sense you're rarely happy where you are, so why not go somewhere else? There are lots of places with fewer boats and friendly people.

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MikeOReilly

· #28 · 3 mo ago

Lanealoha said:
I don't like to hang out with grumpy people much either.....specially when they decided to leave the campfire because of the company and then they want to come back and hang out again with that same attitude.....

This sounds like an oddly specific example. Is there more you're not saying?

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MikeOReilly

· #47 · 3 mo ago

I like your approach Mark. It's a good reminder that we make our own world. We get back what we put out. If you're a grump, you'll see a bunch of grumpy people. If you kind and open, that too is what you'll find. It's up to you.

The whole eyewitness testimony is well understood to be highly unreliable. As humans we all have too many cognitive biases to make it very useful. It's why anecdotal evidence is always considered the worst kind of data when trying to assess a phenomenon. All too often, we see what we want (or expect) to see.

And memory is not a tape recorder that we just roll back and then hit play. Every time we review a memory, we are recreating it from nothing. The fact is, our memories change over time, and again are highly influenced by cognitive bias. It's why the past is always golden, and the present is never as good.

Heck, not even Jesus' apostles could agree. Two of them saw him walk on water, and the other two didn't. If four people who saw the same thing can't agree that someone walked on water, well,...

See less See more

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MikeOReilly

· #58 · 3 mo ago

Don't ask 400 people. Ask one person ... someone you have a connection with, and know they can provide the assistance in the easy way you say it is (I don't know how easy it is).

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MikeOReilly

· #70 · 3 mo ago

My cruising definitely does take me away from people. Where I go, cruising boats are generally few, and far between. It is a pleasant rarity when we do connect with fellow cruisers. This pattern has not changed since I began plying the waters for over 20 years now.

Up here, sharing an anchorage once you get away from the immediate home bay, is rare. So when it happens, most of the time there are friendly interactions. I say most, but not always. Sometimes people just want to be left alone, and that's fine too.

So if you want quality over quantity, go somewhere off the beaten path. The few you find there will (generally) be warm and welcoming, and yes, very helpful.

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MikeOReilly

· #73 · 3 mo ago

Oh man... boat cards aren't a thing anymore? I always thought I was so cool with ours

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MikeOReilly

· #76 · 3 mo ago (Edited)

Where I cruise, you can leave the VHF on channel 16 day and night. You'd rarely even know it. Calls are few and far between.

But I recall when I was in busier waters, like Lake Ontario or the North Channel, and it was constant chatter. Had to squelch down to almost nothing to make it palatable.

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MikeOReilly

· #87 · 3 mo ago

Don L said:
Met 4 cruiser couples at the beach bar/resturant this evening. They agree about the change.

They all had boat cards

I bet if you asked these four people -- in person -- to go with you on a car ride, you'd have more success.

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MikeOReilly

· #95 · 3 mo ago

I really don't understand all the angst about socializing with fellow cruisers. Every time I've held, or ended up in a cockpit gathering, it's resulted after a friendly interaction, either by dinghy or perhaps on the shore. You know... we get chatting, and then -- sometimes -- an invitation gets extended.

It only happens occasionally. Certainly not every boat wants to party with the neighbours. But when it happens, it happens organically -- not forced, or pre-organized, and certainly not somehow expected.

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MikeOReilly

· #99 · 3 mo ago

tempest said:
Living in the most densely populated State in the U.S. My goal in travel was always to get away from people. Finding an empty beach in the Bahamas would be akin to hitting the lottery to me.

I can give you lots of places where this is the norm

tempest said:
That said, I certainly understand that if someone is living at anchor 24/7 with their spouse or SO having other people to socialize with occasionally would be a pleasant distraction from the daily routine. I'd Bake some bread, make a pie or some other treat (a pitcher of Margarits) and stopping by a neighbor's boat with it might elicit an invite.

I'm the bread-baker on our boat as well. The smell of fresh baked bread is like the red carpet for cruisers.

Meeting interesting, new people is certainly part of the joys of this life. It's this notion that it must be, or else the world is somehow going to hell in a hand-basket, which makes most of us roll our eyes. You get back what you put out. If you are warm and friendly, you'll find lots of people being warm and friendly. If you are a curmudgeon, and complaining all the time, then you'll see a world full of those type of people.

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MikeOReilly

· #104 · 2 mo ago

For some, reality is never as good as it used to be. Or to put it more poetically, you can never go home.

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