in Los Angeles
if you don’t like your car,
for a hundred bucks,
you can get it ‘stolen’,
and the car ends up at the river and is set on fire.
insurance makes things good.
everybody wins
This is the luckiest couple I have read about in a long time.
Think what might have happened if they made it out into the real ocean. People die out there. And, with their level of experience that is more than just a possibility.
Time to buy a utralite plane!
Life savings and all they could get was 28 footer?
I would not live aboard on less than. 37
I’d prefer a 44 and up flush deck sloop
An old 41 Morgan OI was broad beam roomy but a hog at sea
Any Bob Perry like a Tayana 37 or a Hood Bristol 38
Bigger budget then a Hinckley or Hylas or Baltic
Double enter canoe stern Lafitte 44 or a Hinckley Bermuda 40
Like pistol cartridges number 40 and up
I know that pass well......the main one tween Clearwater and Pass a Grille
Pass a Grille was my home outer marker in the old working days long ago now
When I could see Egmont Key buoy and then the Don Cesar I knew I was almost home on Tierra Verde...thank you lord
South Saint Pete beach had few high rises then...the holiday inn and the Don was about it
Early 80s
Moved down to Boca Grande later ...Stump Pass....much trickier
These folks were noobs
I would love to hear Travis McGees comment on this. Maybe he will use it in some way in a future novel?
I’m not a boater but have worked on them, big steel hulled tour boats so i know engines, electrical and hydraulics.
I would buy a boat, seriously, but i would never call it a dreams goal, more like a hobby. Like converting a sailboat to a full electric drive.
I knew a couple in their mid 49s who had been sailing since they were kids. When I met them they had sailed around the world twice plus many other long passages. They owned a 38 ft boat and were building a new 40 ft boat by hand.
He was the head maintenance man at a hotel. She was an emergency room RN. His job came with an apartment. They planned to finish the boat in 2 years. They had been working on it for 8 months when I met them. When the boat was finished they were going to sell the boat they had and the old car they had,, ad that money to their savings, quit their jobs and sail around the world again.
I got a post card from them 4 years later. They were in South Africa. About a year after that I got a short note and picture from them from Pitcairn Island. They were spending about 18 months island hopping before heading for the Atlantic.
The last time I heard from them they were back in Florida. They were living on the boat. She was working as a nurse, while he was overhauling the boat and looking for a job. They were planning a passage to Europe when they got the boat ready and enough cash.
The people in this story going to sea in a $10,000 boat and with very little skill was stupid.
Everything they ever worked for since childhood.
He is 26 years old. It is not like he lost his $500,000 house and $500,000 401k in one fell swoop.
They lost $10,000. Sucks, but that is nothing in the cosmic spectrum of things. Are boats insured? I don’t know. All I know is that they lost a nice opportunity for a boat trip and lost a small amount of money. Oh well.
This is not a human tragedy. It is a really minor setback.
I wonder what their student loan balances are.
I will just make another comment, dreams are good but are bad when reality bites back. I have dreams all the time but most i have to tell them to just piss off because its impractical, its too expensive, its unrealistic for my age and social grouping.
Dreams are the dessert after the reality main meal too me, you cannot live on just desserts.
Though snowflakes believe it.
That was fast. It usually takes a boat owner a year to lose all their money.
Florida, struck something underwater, from Colorado, sold everything to buy, 28 foot sailboat ... that is not going to end well just on the facts.
Probably never heard of coral reefs, GPS, fathometers, radar, and, of course, nautical charts.
This is not as rare as some may think. Occurrences similar to this happen all the time; people take sailing lessons in a relatively benign body of water, then, heads full of mush (sorry RL), they head for the open ocean never to be seen again; people go sailing without a chart or the ability to read it, get in trouble, radio for help, report their position, but no one can find them because they are actually 100 miles for the position they reported; people in the stern fall overboard and someone else puts the boat in reverse ...; people fall over the side, those on deck call the Coast Guard, person in water drowns while bobbing a foot from the side of the boat because no one wanted to touch the person in the water ...
You don’t get much of a sailboat for $5,000 even if you have to invest another $5K. I’d offer a guess that that boat had no business being in the ocean.........
I may have grown up in a bubble, but a couple in their late 20’s, early 30’s where everything they own comes to $5000 must have made some really bad choices. This is supported by the fact it only took 2 days for them to wreck their boat.
These two simpletons have no perspective: God may have done them the biggest favor of their lives by STOPPING THEM in shallow water before they lost MORE than everything they owned.
Sergeantdave’s Rule No. 10 for a healthy and long life:
Stay off water where things live that can eat you in one bite.
From the link, the photo of the couple looks suspect. She looks 20 years old tops, he looks 45. More like Father and Daughter.
$5000 here, $5000 there. Its just crumbs