On not being a social pariah and budgets...

Since my blathering on budgets seemed to strike a chord...

Something to keep in mind is that what you spend cruising is really your own business and no one really cares. Once you get away from the boatyard bullies, cruising forums, pimpage of the marine press, and actually get out cruising, there is bugger all peer pressure telling you to replace your perfectly good chart plotter with the new model because it's newer and more expensive...

This, dear reader, is a goodly thing!

Of course, this is going to bother some folks...

Let's say you spent all that money to have the perfect hip cruising boat, dressed yourself in designer cruising togs, and outfitted with all the best and costly electronics that the gizmo god Panbo has ordained... Only to find when you are with a bunch of cruisers at a potluck that the guy in an old plywood Wharram, wearing shorts ($4.99 Kmart), and an old t-shirt (found on the beach), whose modern marine instruments are an old Walker log, a $50 GPS, and an elderly handheld VHF, is treated as your equal if not your better...

Which is not to say that different social strata do not exist in cruiserland... Those who feel the need to eat out every single night tend to posse up, heavy drinkers of the social sort collect drinking buddies, the proud grandparents seem to need like minds to share their cornucopia of snapshots, and serious readers and film buffs do like to trade... There are many and varied social groups and pairings in the cruising fleet but so far (and that entails a couple of decades of immersion), I've yet to find social grouping by designer chic, hipness, or rampant consumerism in the cruising fleet.

OK... That last statement is not quite correct in a sorta/kinda way... The cruising rallies, while not cruisers exactly, are very much of the hipness and unbridled consumerism ilk. Sort of the gated community version of cruising, they tend to be somewhat incestuous and as a result don't play well with others. Since they do not mix with or affect us lesser non-rally folk they simply do not count in the real world that is cruising...

Listening to Dobie Gray

So it goes...