Tuesday, December 15, 2015

a little compromise is a goodly thang...

Schwarzenegger making a lot of sense, an interesting riff on privilege, and the heady aroma of rose petals on crap...

The other day I heard someone talking about why he wanted a no-compromise boat and then he mentioned the boat he deemed to be exactly that.

The boat in question currently has a lot of folks excited but to say that the boat is an example of a no-compromise mindset is ludicrous. The fact of the matter is, it's a cornucopia of compromise and when you've studied boats as long as I have, you'll know that's no bad thing... All boats are, by their very nature, a compromise.

Don't believe me?

Pick a boat that uses ballast and look at what material is being used and you'll, more than likely, find it's lead or steel either of which is a compromise of weight and cost... Lead, being denser (spelled heavier) and taking up less space, also happens to be more expensive than steel. So, you'd think that lead is the no-compromise designer and builders choice... Yeah?

How about gold? Gold weighs 1206 pound per cubic foot and lead, by comparison, weighs in at 709 pounds so by choosing lead over gold (or an even heavier more expensive glow-in-the-dark-testicle toasting-metal) we're talking the same sort of compromise of using lead over steel or even concrete.

Gold makes all kinds of sense as a ballast material but it is silly expensive so not using it is an obvious and sane compromise...

Really... who could afford a frelling gold keel? Granted, replacing the lead ballast on my CAL 34 would be an awesome performance enhancement but that would cost (at today's rate of $1,065.55 an ounce) $63,933,000.00. That's a whole lot of cat food as Buffy and Willow would say. Need I really say more?

Compromise is really all about utility and what works in a given situation. So, in most cases, it adds to the safety and performance of the boat rather than the opposite.

When folks (usually spelled salespeople) start expounding on their new no-compromise cruising boat, they're most likely trying to sell you something and they happen to think you're a gull.

Listening to Joey and Kelly

So it goes...