11:49 PM Mon 3 Aug 2009 GMT
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'Will they never learn to just get along?'
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What a question! But I've been wondering about this since a powerboating friend joined me a on a sail recently and he sort of made an accusation to that effect.
Not about me personally, of course, just as my jokes about stinkpotters weren't about him personally, of course-just more of that playful enmity between two classes of boaters.
My friend used to work at a marina. It mostly served powerboaters, but he described the occasional sailboat that pulled up to the fuel dock this way:
'I'll buy two gallons of diesel, please. And while I'm here I'll need about 80 gallons of water in my tanks-that's free, right?-and you don't mind if I use the hose to wash down my decks? I see your restrooms over there, and I assume you have free showers for paying boaters, right? Got soap and a razor I can use? Thanks. Oh, and could you pump out my holding tank too, while I'm here. And you don't charge for ice for fuel customers, do you? I'll take four blocks-you'll find the ice box just right down those steps. Great. The diesel comes to $4.80, you say? Here's a five-keep the change.'
Now of course sailors aren't really cheap like that, but I had to acknowledge that with all his exaggeration he may have been on to something. Certainly a big powerboat that comes into a marina and spends a few hundred on fuel is helping their economy more than a sailor who needs comparatively little. Most sailors I know don't like to run their engine all that much, and we all delight in the wind being free. But cheapness, well, that's a comparative matter.
Watch customers in a marine chandlery sometime. Here's that same powerboater who just dropped $300 on gas wrangling with the clerk about fishing lures.
After using up 20 minutes of the clerk's time, he leaves with a $1.99 purchase of rubber worms, having ignored his bratty kids who ran all over the store towing each other on inflatable toys that dad won't buy them. And here's that sailor with the frugal diesel dropping several hundred on new wire halyards, blocks and shackles, and updated flares.
It's all relative, I think. One person's frugality is another's cheapness. Sailors and powerboaters, will we ever learn just to get along?
Read more articles by Tom Lochhaas by going to Tom's Sailing About
website
by Tom Lochhaas
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Cape Leeuwin, WA
