Mission creep...

Way past depressing, hardly surprising, and something John Scalzi wrote that everyone should read every once in awhile...

I've been following yet another one of those rolling forum discussions on a perfect boat for a couple. As most such discussions of this sort, it is high on entertainment value as well as a continued source for the insane urge to beat my head against the bulkhead till the pain stops...

What I do find interesting is the way the "perfect boat" tends to creep up in size as more and more features are added. So, you start up with the premise of a perfect 30-footer and all of a sudden someone pipes up that a "real" cruising boat needs at least 60-gallons of water, while another guy points out it would be foolhardy to go to sea without at least a 60HP engine (using the oft-cited example of having to motor off a lee shore in a force 5 hurricane) and the fuel tankage to run it. All of a sudden your perfect minimal 30-foot cruiser for a couple has somehow morphed into a Tayana 55...

Now, how the hell did that happen?

Little changes in a boats design or attributes have much larger effect than most people realize as space on a 30-foot boat is finite and as soon as you've filled that space the only way to add more is to go bigger. Of course, that's so obvious that everyone knows it but apparently, from time to time, it winds up in the memory hole.

The cure to mission creep is to simply weigh everything on the need/want scale... Do you really need sixty gallons of water tankage? Is full standing headroom needful everywhere? Do you really need an inboard engine at all?

Oh, and it helps never to work up a want list by committee...

Listening to Red Molly

So it goes...