Posted on 11/25/2013 7:47:39 AM PST by Travis McGee
Anybody who spends six months in a boatyard turning a $10,000 wreck into a $50,000 dreamboat is going to know all about maintenance!
Now he's in his 50's, has his PH.D and is a successful shrink. Recently out from under a bloody divorce, I think this is exactly the thing he's going to love. In fact, he's been thinking that what he really needs isn't so much this huge Morgan, but rather a smaller 30-35 foot sloop without the center cockpit and hydraulic steering. Rather than the Morgan wallowing down Biscayne Bay on a light breeze and needing a 25 knot gusty day to get "heeled" something that has cable steering and acts a bit livelier in lighter south Florida weather. Do you think he could find something good on a trade? The Morgan is I think a 1980 vintage. The boat before that was a 41 Out Isle and that was the boat we took to the Bahamas as kids, then he moved up a notch.
Oh and BTW as I recall the “Busted Flush” was a gas guzzling house boat! Of course the stupid movie with Sam Elliott ruined the franchise.;-P
No way I can afford a boat.... yet.
For me it’s financial and familial. I would very much love to cut ties, but the ties I do cut would be family; and we are very tight. My mother, of all people, would be devastated if we were “away” for months at a time.
Wow, this sounds like it came directly from Castigo Cay.
Meanwhile back on the land, it's cannibal city....
For someone with a few extra bucks to waste, an Awlgrip job on the hull and topsides will make the boat look like a shiny new $50K yacht. That’s amazing stuff but it has to be done by trained people. Its not a DIY project.
For those who don’t like the idea of sailing, there are always single engine trawlers. Very economical and you are not dependent on wind.
Yep, who needs gelcoat? When you are talking about rehabbing a 20-30 year old plastic boat, Awlgrip is the ONLY way to go! (Professionally applied.)
That’s the idea, just to open up some landlocked minds.
Great article and great pic Matt! For all the peppers who think you are gonna live high off the hog in the mountain cabin, well, good luck with that. Between the lone snipers and mad max gangs all trying to take your stuff I don’t think it’s going to be easy street.
I live on my 30’ sailboat. I have been stocking it to survive for 6+ months WAY off shore. Solar, food, water, fishing gear, Ect. Ect. I can formulate a plan to come back to mother ussa, or head “down island”. After the cannibals rage subsides.
On another note, isn’t it amazing that this is a serious conversation? How quickly America has changed.
I’d keep the old Morgan and be in the Bahamas so fast....
Just guessing:
The day you buy it, and the day you get rid of it?
One of the best names for a power boat I ever saw was “Gas Pains”. True story. lol
You got it.
If the ocean stayed a calm as in the picture , a 30 footer might interest me. However I have seen 30 foot waves and I prefer to fly thank you.
Back in my mid 20s I worked with a guy, about 10-15 years older, who actually made me think of going tn this direction.
He’d regale the younger male staff in the office of how, as in O2 or O3 serving a Pentagon tour, he had a 30 or 35’ sailboat he owned and lived on at the Pentagon Marina.
He also, as a result, had his choice of the more attractive and nubile members of the Pentagon secretarial staff. And would, routinely, take a rotating cast of up to four or five of them (at a time) for rather “comforable” weekend excursions down the Potomac (”Once one found out I had a boat, all her close - and soon to be closer -friends found out as well. And THEY’D bring the food and beer too!”)
Alas, I was already in a serious committed relationship with the young woman who would become my wife of, now, 20 or do years. Which I in no
way regret or would trade for anything.
But occasionally i do wonder of the possibilities of hearing that particular story four or five years before I did ...
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