Just do it...

Post-Newtown gun legislation (not what you'd expect), Dorworth makes a point as apt for sailing as it is for skiing, and the next feeding frenzy is not for your benefit...

One of my problems in choosing the next boat is that I don't just have one true path but see a few possible avenues and I find myself torn between them. Face it, the right boat for a couple with a couple of cats and no shortage of guitars for minimalist cruising is not the same boat for the same couple (with cats and guitars) doing a floating business that involves a workshop, moving cargo from one place to another, and providing services that are in need of them in places ill-served by the current status quo... Different tasks different tools as they say.

I mention this because, over the last few decades, I've thought lots and lots about the return of commercial sail albeit in a small scale, sustainable, and profitable manner and find most of the various and sundry projects being put forth as ill conceived, over complicated, and doomed to run out of money before they even lay the keel...

A quick side note is the story about the sailing cargo/ferry boat Phil Bolger designed which was doomed when the powers that be spent more than the cost of building two boats on various feasibility studies to see whether the idea made sense or not (for those interested in more of the story it's in Phil's "Boats With an Open Mind").

Anyway, the (mostly) current thinking on commercial sail is both an exercise in over-thinking and reinventing the wheel which is sad because these bigger more expensive projects steal the thunder of smaller projects that have a much better chance of succeeding. When the big projects fail, everyone will use them as the example of how commercial sail is a losing proposition and doomed to failure.

The real beauty of small accessible projects is that folks can mainly just do it and avoid the stasis and group think of the sort that killed the Sir Joseph Banks project.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, to the Vermont Sail Freight Project which is just the sort of working sail enterprise that actually makes sense. It's using affordable tried and tested technology (no reinventing of the wheel), has reasonable accessible goals, and is filling a real need that is only going to become bigger... Sounds like just the sort of project we should tell folks about and support!

Better yet, the project is already building and, I expect, will be launched and working long before any of those bigger projects get past their feasibility/design studies.

As it happens, they do happen to be a Kick Starter project so it is easy to help if you want to...

Just do it!

Listening to John Hiatt

So it goes...