Is it just me....

[Rafici]

Is it just me, or dose owning a sailboat feel a lot like owning a classic muscle car?  In the sense that no matter what project you finish, you will come away with 1 or 3 more stuck in your head that need done, or is it just me?

[Bob23]

It's everyone. It's just the way life is! Nothing is ever done completely and I've learned to enjoy my car, boat, house and life in general in whatever state of incompleteness they happen to be in. This year, the exterior teak on my boat is in the worst condition since I've owner her. While I'm not thrilled about it, she'll sail the same and we'll have a great time! Next year it'll be restored but for now, neither she nor I will be bothered about such a trivial issue as shiny wood.
Bob23...not a classic muscle car owner anyway.

[brackish]

It's much worse!  With a classic muscle car you can get it show ready and then it is normally very lightly used and weather protected.  You have the same desire for perfection with a sailboat but because of its high use rate in all kinds of conditions and generally being not protected from the weather it is impossible to ever get there except for a fleeting second or two.  But still your strive.......

[alsantini]

Well, I have both.  A 1968 Firebird convertible and a Com Pac Eclipse.  Like Brackish said the car is actually easier since it lives in a garage with a cover on.  Off the Wind is never indoors.  I am in my 3rd year of ownership and she has never been inside.  Summers in a slip in Northern Illinois and winters out in the Florida sun.  I maintain a list of things that I want to get done.  It is divided into long term and short term.  Right now long term has new fenders and 13 inch tires, repair mold pops (not sure that is the correct term for the small blisters or voids in the gelcoat), relocate batteries forward.  Short term has refinishing the teak, add the chartplotter, total topsides wax, new anchor chain (coated).  This year I have crossed off my short term list to add the name of the boat to each side and I am mostly done on the chartplotter install.  I need to add to the short term  list replace the extrusion of the CDI FF-1 furler since I found the top cracked last week when I launched.  New one ordered and on its way.  For me, part of the joy of ownership is seeing the boat actually improve.  There are days that I drive up to the boat and decide not to sail but rather to work on the list.  Chicken (my Firebird) is calling me since she feels neglected.  Time for an oil change, a new master cylinder and some country drives with the top down.  Sail (drive) on all.  Al

[Tim Gardner]

I don't have a muscle car from the 60s, but i have a '67 AH Sprite Mk IV with an astounding 65 HP four banger that goes 0 to 60 in three afternoons.  Bought it for$600 clams in '73.  Fixed the blisters on S'Go just need to repaint the boot stripe and she's ready to be dunked back into the waters of Smith Mountain Lake. The car is the "old man' at 49 years of age, but the 19 is just 31...my wife is jealous of the time i spent on her bottom. 

TG

[Citroen/Dave]

My time is split between 16 feet of a nearly private heaven (only four more thing that "must" be done) and a 1990 Citroen XM.  The 16 will do about 5 MPH while the Citroen cruising speed is rated at 147 MPH.  Currently the XM needs a new engine ECU, otherwise for the time being, it will remain an exotic yard ornament, while the C16/2 will do 55MPH behind my Rav 4.  Ain't retirement fun!   Lynchburg has a "new" DS 21 and a "new" SM Citroen.  Now we need a CP 19 and a CP 23.

Citroen/Dave

P.S.  I guess Tim's CP 19 is close enough . . .

[Mas]

Well though we are now back into sailing for the first time in many years, the act of sailing is not unlike riding a bike, it comes back almost immediately. What also comes back is the desire to tinker around on your boat. I have soo....learned to live with things not "just right" in all areas of my life and to simply see what we have and overlook what we don't. I don't particularly like cutting grass or bush hogging but it sure looks good afterwards even though I know it will grow back, it has to be done. Our boat is that way as well, as I don't particularly like some of the tasks she requires (wanna go sail) but there is satisfaction in getting them done. It is why there is the term 'ship shape' which we apply to many things! Don't worry, the only time you will be done with work on your boat is when you no longer have her. I vote for the work and having the boat rather than no work and no boat!

With all that said this weather could try to cooperate with the last items on our list! 

[NCboater]

Tim,  my first car in1975 was the sister car to your AH Sprite.  I bought a '67 MG MIdget MK II with a blown engine for $200 when I was 14.  My uncle found a Mark 1 engine (whopping 948cc) and I spent a summer with him putting it in.  I painted it British Racing Green and it had wire wheels with the spinner hub.  Like yours it would hit 70 on a good day...downhill but it was fun to drive.

[TJ]

That is the joy of owning a boat, there is always a project to occupy your mind, or if it is not too severe you can go sailing and "Get around to it" later. 

[Bilgemaster]

I don't have a muscle car from the 60s, but i have a '67 AH Sprite Mk IV with an astounding 65 HP four banger that goes 0 to 60 in three afternoons.  Bought it for$600 clams in '73.  Fixed the blisters on S'Go just need to repaint the boot stripe and she's ready to be dunked back into the waters of Smith Mountain Lake. The car is the "old man' at 49 years of age, but the 19 is just 31...my wife is jealous of the time i spent on her bottom. 

TG

You're just nearby enough for me to have to ask: Is it blue? And did you perhaps buy it from an almost cartoonishly voluptuous blond gal in DC's Maryland suburbs?  Because I was gonna buy that $500 Austin Healey Sprite. But then, by the time I had scraped up most of the cash, I was overcome with a sudden and uncharacteristic impulse towards practicality and instead went with an old VW Bug instead.  Still, I remember that Austin fondly as sort of "the road not traveled" (or perhaps more accurately, "not broken down on"    In the end, my vehicular impracticality expressed itself in the mid-'90s with the acquisition of a 1967 Amphicar, which I still have.  As it happens, the original engine intended to be used in them was, you guessed it, an Austin unit, which the early prototypes actually had.  But Austin couldn't deliver the numbers needed, and so they went instead with the similar Triumph "Standard" 70 (1147 cc), the same power plant used in the Mk.II Spitfires and Heralds.  Sure it gets the Amphi where she needs to go, but at just shy of 2,300 lbs. vs. the Spitfire's svelte 1,600...not real quickly.  Still, in an Amphi it's sort of like what Dr. Brown says: "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."

[Duckie]

I wonder if it is a guy thing, or a sailboat guy thing?  It would seem that all of my toys are limited to sixteen feet in length.  Both of my sailboats are sixteen feet on deck and my motorhome is the same.  I drive a 1979 Galavan class C motorhome which also sports a whopping 110 horses rampaging under the hood.  This unit is a fiberglass camper body mounted on a Datsun 620 bullet side pickup body.  They only made 2,000 Galavans and I am sure I have one of the last ones still on the road.  On trips I get between 20 and 25 mpg, a fact that almost got me punched in Mitchell SD.  It doesn't have quite enough room for the spousal unit, so I mostly travel alone, darn it.  When I bought it, it had orange shag carpeting covering the entire interior.  It was enough to make my eyes bleed.  It was in such rough shape that I gutted the entire thing and re-did it completely.  Now it sports luan paneling throughout with a more tasteful beige carpeting limited to where it belongs. 

To say that it needs frequent and expensive fussing over is an understatement.  Kind of like a sailboat.  I don't think I am being nostalgic, but I am drawn to older things and I don't apologize for that, even if it does confound my wife.

Al