Hard Times
No matter how obvious the signs look in retrospect, the arrival of hard times always seems to catch us off guard, and the harder the times the bigger the surprise.
Our current times look to be as bad as we have had in a long while, so it follows that they must be the biggest surprise we have had in a long while. Looking back, we can see all the signs very clearly. Big downturns always follow big run-ups, and, from house prices to hedge fund fees, we had some real doozies. But back then everyone seemed to think that house prices would go up forever, and that hedge fund managers had broken the code for generating outlandish returns in perpetuity.
But, to use an analogy, in the cold light of dawn last night’s party always looks like a waste of an evening – a bunch of drunks laughing at bad jokes and making fools of themselves on the dance floor, in the certain knowledge that the bar would never close and the band would never go home. Dealing with the next morning’s hangover, the erstwhile party animal has become the soberest of wallflowers, vowing never again to overindulge like that.
That ice-pack-on-the-head posture, economically speaking, is where we are now. The credit cards are cut up or stuffed in the dresser drawer, every day’s batch of catalogs goes directly into the recycling bin, and the email notifications of once-in-a-lifetime sale prices are deleted before they are even opened. At least that’s the way things are at our house.
So, in light of these hard times, doesn’t sailing look like a wasteful extravagance? If the kitchen renovation has been put off yet again, if dinners out are a distant memory, and if the trips to see the grandkids have been cut to one per year, how can we justify things like dockage and winter storage?
Well, I can, actually. Maybe it isn’t totally objective, but I can justify Greyhound in times like these. So now, I suppose I have to defend myself.
To begin with, Greyhound didn’t cost much – nothing at all when you count the money I got from selling my Alacrity 19. Going from a 19-footer to a 26-footer for no outlay has to start me off on the right foot. It makes every afternoon sail feel like a freebie, and every trip to the marina a reminder of how smart (or lucky, is more like it) I was. The times can’t be all that hard when you live like that.
Except, of course, all sailors know that the purchase price of a boat is like the ante in a hand of poker – it’s the ticket to losing some serious money. Possession of a boat gains you entry to every chandlery within a hundred miles, every boat show you could drive all night to get to, and every vendor with an attractive ad in a sailing magazine. The assumption seems to be that anyone with a fiberglass hull and Dacron sails is a sucker for every doodad and service imaginable.
Not me, and not now. There’s a time to buy stuff, and there’s a time to install the stuff you bought. The buying time for me was last year and the year before. Not that I went crazy, mind you. Every item was researched and comparison-shopped, and agonized over. But it was purchased nonetheless. Now my “boat bins” are full of goodies just waiting to make my sailing life easier, or speedier, or more fashionable, or something. Wait - did I just admit that I’m one of those suckers? Perish the thought!
So now I have the fun of installing it all. I can mount the thirty-year-old winch I removed from the mast base to the doghouse roof, along with the new rope clutch (dirt cheap, really!), so I can raise the main properly from the cockpit. And I get to put the lovely cleats I got on Ebay on the stern coaming so I can properly moor Greyhound. My new fenders (on sale, of course) will dress up the berth, and protect the topsides. And my new whisker pole (the only significant expenditure of the winter) will fill out my racing kit this coming summer.
When I go down to the boat this spring and summer, I expect a few of the berths will be empty. There will be more For Sale signs on the marina bulletin board. When I’m cleaning, or repairing, or upgrading, I’ll probably hear more than a little grousing about prices and costs and incomes. Hopefully, I won’t be listening too hard.
There’s no telling what the summer will bring, economically. Jobs may persist or disappear. The markets may stabilize or fall some more. Times may get easier, or they may stay hard as nails. All I know is that I’m going to get the most out of every minute on Greyhound, whether working on her or sailing her. Going all out is the only way I know of to deal with hard times.
