Sunday, March 11, 2012

about that word affordable...

A note on the price of e-books and the downside of greed, you pee first is a political mantra in Georgia, and Wendell Pierce (one of our favorite actors from Treme and The Wire) does something important...

Have you ever noticed how coy some people are when it comes to discussing what it costs to have a boat, cruise, and other monetary hijinks around boats?

Personally the word I hate most is affordable. Affordable is a cipher and only means something if you know the code... For instance, when someone tells you that a marina or boatyard is "affordable" that could mean anything and face it, a guy with a pristine Swan 70 is going to have a very different idea of what the term affordable means than say a couple on a beat up CAL 28...

So, next time you write into a cruising forum to share information about the cost of cruising a certain area, try and include some real numbers about what stuff actually costs. If you're talking about a marina or boatyard give a cost per foot, if it's about provisioning mention what a few staples (rice/eggs/chicken) go for to give us a hazy idea about what affordable actually means...

Listening to something from Treme

So it goes...