No need to feel guilty or explain...

Sold out with a waiting list, on the subject of tattoos, and a little more of that American pie...

A blog I read from time to time just did a post recently defending their boat decisions of the more rather than less sort. It got me thinking about why someone should feel the need to justify their choices...

For sure, there is nothing wrong with having SSB, radar, watermaker, fridge, freezer, and other home comfort items. The thing is, they all come at a cost and hassle factor that you have to pay for and deal with and, as long as you're comfortable with the cost and hassle factor, it's the right thing to do.

We cruised for a bunch of years without refrigeration and most of that time didn't even bother with ice for the ice box. We got along just fine. Looking back at those days I'm glad we did it because it taught us a lot about the negative side of refrigeration on food longevity and the skills needful for successful provisioning. Today we have a small (one cubic foot) Stirling engine fridge which is all we need to keep the lemonade and the week's stock of meat cold.

On the other hand, neither a watermaker or a SSB quite pass the current need/want test for us. As far as water goes, we are very frugal in terms of water usage and the added hassle factor of a watermaker is keeping it off the list. Pretty much the same goes for the SSB... We have a receiver and don't feel the need to talk to anybody so why bother? That said, if the we ever find that the hassle factor of getting water goes up or the need to talk to folks at a distance becomes important, we'll act accordingly.

The thing is, what you want to do is what you should do... In our case, we tend to lean towards doing without hassle rather than doing without what amounts to perceived comforts, but that's just us.

Listening to Lyle Lovett

So it goes...