Yesterday, while shopping, I noticed that Velveeta cost $14.95 for a two pound box...
So, I just have to ask...
WTF?
Really, when did pseudo-cheese-like-substitute start costing more than real cheese?
As it happens, I bought some Muenster and Monterey Jack for $5.98 a pound and I'm pretty sure you can do the math.
It gets weirder, Spam cost more than ham and canned corned beef cost more than beef roast. It was like all the poor people's cruising staples had become gourmet or some such.
To tell you the truth, I was too afraid to even go down the aisle where they keep the Ramen...
Maybe I was just having one of those stepped into an alternate universe sort of days yesterday.
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!”
―
L. Frank Baum,
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
Anybody keeping an eye on the Tiny House trend already knows downsizing is a very real and vibrant force. What you may have missed is it's just the tip of the iceberg. A lot more of the same sort of thought process is popping up all over... even where boats are concerned.
That said, a lot of people just don't understand what's going on. Hardly surprising when the powers-that-be and those who profit from the current state of affairs keep telling us that perpetual growth is both viable and sustainable. Hey, repeat something often enough and folks begin to believe just about anything no matter how stupid it may be.
I suspect that most folks are all so busy fueling the perpetual growth machine that the contradictions simply don't register...
Maybe it's time to take a day off from the hamster wheel and do a little thinking.
Some food for thought before you dust off the BBQ and get to the holidaze ting...
Robert Reich brings clarity to the economy circa 2011, Skippy points out some things regarding the environment and it's scary, good men and women in uniform continue to die in needless wars, and the rich just keep getting richer...
Same as it ever was... you'd really think we'd get a clue.
Which, of course, has bugger all to do with boats, boatbuilding, and cruising... Except for the fact that what's going on in the world affects us big time whether we are anchored in (insert your most dreamed about or favorite anchorage here), and if you do not believe, just look at how much it costs you to fill a grocery basket with provisions, fill your fuel tanks, or get a new sail.
Which is why I subtitled this blog "Sailing in Hard Times" to try and be a small link to the real world and not just another escapist let's-party-till-the-lights-go-out and adopt an Alfred E.Newman take on sailing...
Contrary to what those in power would like you to believe so that you'll give up your pension, cut your wages, and settle for the life your great-grandparents had, America is not broke. Not by a long shot. The country is awash in wealth and cash. It's just that it's not in your hands. It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the uber-rich.
Today just 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined.
Let me say that again. 400 obscenely rich people, most of whom benefited in some way from the multi-trillion dollar taxpayer "bailout" of 2008, now have more loot, stock and property than the assets of 155 million Americans combined. If you can't bring yourself to call that a financial coup d'état, then you are simply not being honest about what you know in your heart to be true.
And I can see why. For us to admit that we have let a small group of men abscond with and hoard the bulk of the wealth that runs our economy, would mean that we'd have to accept the humiliating acknowledgment that we have indeed surrendered our precious Democracy to the moneyed elite. Wall Street, the banks and the Fortune 500 now run this Republic -- and, until this past month, the rest of us have felt completely helpless, unable to find a way to do anything about it.
I have nothing more than a high school degree. But back when I was in school, every student had to take one semester of economics in order to graduate. And here's what I learned: Money doesn't grow on trees. It grows when we make things. It grows when we have good jobs with good wages that we use to buy the things we need and thus create more jobs. It grows when we provide an outstanding educational system that then grows a new generation of inventers, entrepreneurs, artists, scientists and thinkers who come up with the next great idea for the planet. And that new idea creates new jobs and that creates revenue for the state. But if those who have the most money don't pay their fair share of taxes, the state can't function. The schools can't produce the best and the brightest who will go on to create those jobs. If the wealthy get to keep most of their money, we have seen what they will do with it: recklessly gamble it on crazy Wall Street schemes and crash our economy. The crash they created cost us millions of jobs. That too caused a reduction in revenue. And the population ended up suffering because they reduced their taxes, reduced our jobs and took wealth out of the system, removing it from circulation.
The nation is not broke, my friends. Wisconsin is not broke. It's part of the Big Lie. It's one of the three biggest lies of the decade: America/Wisconsin is broke, Iraq has WMD, the Packers can't win the Super Bowl without Brett Favre.
The truth is, there's lots of money to go around. LOTS. It's just that those in charge have diverted that wealth into a deep well that sits on their well-guarded estates. They know they have committed crimes to make this happen and they know that someday you may want to see some of that money that used to be yours. So they have bought and paid for hundreds of politicians across the country to do their bidding for them. But just in case that doesn't work, they've got their gated communities, and the luxury jet is always fully fueled, the engines running, waiting for that day they hope never comes. To help prevent that day when the people demand their country back, the wealthy have done two very smart things:
1. They control the message. By owning most of the media they have expertly convinced many Americans of few means to buy their version of the American Dream and to vote for their politicians. Their version of the Dream says that you, too, might be rich some day – this is America, where anything can happen if you just apply yourself! They have conveniently provided you with believable examples to show you how a poor boy can become a rich man, how the child of a single mother in Hawaii can become president, how a guy with a high school education can become a successful filmmaker. They will play these stories for you over and over again all day long so that the last thing you will want to do is upset the apple cart -- because you -- yes, you, too! -- might be rich/president/an Oscar-winner some day! The message is clear: keep you head down, your nose to the grindstone, don't rock the boat and be sure to vote for the party that protects the rich man that you might be some day.
2. They have created a poison pill that they know you will never want to take. It is their version of mutually assured destruction. And when they threatened to release this weapon of mass economic annihilation in September of 2008, we blinked. As the economy and the stock market went into a tailspin, and the banks were caught conducting a worldwide Ponzi scheme, Wall Street issued this threat: Either hand over trillions of dollars from the American taxpayers or we will crash this economy straight into the ground. Fork it over or it's Goodbye savings accounts. Goodbye pensions. Goodbye United States Treasury. Goodbye jobs and homes and future. It was friggin' awesome and it scared the shit out of everyone. "Here! Take our money! We don't care. We'll even print more for you! Just take it! But, please, leave our lives alone, PLEASE!"
The executives in the board rooms and hedge funds could not contain their laughter, their glee, and within three months they were writing each other huge bonus checks and marveling at how perfectly they had played a nation full of suckers. Millions lost their jobs anyway, and millions lost their homes. But there was no revolt (see #1).
Until now. On Wisconsin! Never has a Michigander been more happy to share a big, great lake with you! You have aroused the sleeping giant know as the working people of the United States of America. Right now the earth is shaking and the ground is shifting under the feet of those who are in charge. Your message has inspired people in all 50 states and that message is: WE HAVE HAD IT! We reject anyone tells us America is broke and broken. It's just the opposite! We are rich with talent and ideas and hard work and, yes, love. Love and compassion toward those who have, through no fault of their own, ended up as the least among us. But they still crave what we all crave: Our country back! Our democracy back! Our good name back! The United States of America. NOT the Corporate States of America. The United States of America!
So how do we get this? Well, we do it with a little bit of Egypt here, a little bit of Madison there. And let us pause for a moment and remember that it was a poor man with a fruit stand in Tunisia who gave his life so that the world might focus its attention on how a government run by billionaires for billionaires is an affront to freedom and morality and humanity.
Thank you, Wisconsin. You have made people realize this was our last best chance to grab the final thread of what was left of who we are as Americans. For three weeks you have stood in the cold, slept on the floor, skipped out of town to Illinois -- whatever it took, you have done it, and one thing is for certain: Madison is only the beginning. The smug rich have overplayed their hand. They couldn't have just been content with the money they raided from the treasury. They couldn't be satiated by simply removing millions of jobs and shipping them overseas to exploit the poor elsewhere. No, they had to have more – something more than all the riches in the world. They had to have our soul. They had to strip us of our dignity. They had to shut us up and shut us down so that we could not even sit at a table with them and bargain about simple things like classroom size or bulletproof vests for everyone on the police force or letting a pilot just get a few extra hours sleep so he or she can do their job -- their $19,000 a year job. That's how much some rookie pilots on commuter airlines make, maybe even the rookie pilots flying people here to Madison. But he's stopped trying to get better pay. All he asks is that he doesn't have to sleep in his car between shifts at O'Hare airport. That's how despicably low we have sunk. The wealthy couldn't be content with just paying this man $19,000 a year. They wanted to take away his sleep. They wanted to demean and dehumanize him. After all, he's just another slob.
And that, my friends, is Corporate America's fatal mistake. But trying to destroy us they have given birth to a movement -- a movement that is becoming a massive, nonviolent revolt across the country. We all knew there had to be a breaking point some day, and that point is upon us. Many people in the media don't understand this. They say they were caught off guard about Egypt, never saw it coming. Now they act surprised and flummoxed about why so many hundreds of thousands have come to Madison over the last three weeks during brutal winter weather. "Why are they all standing out there in the cold? I mean there was that election in November and that was supposed to be that!
"There's something happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you ...?"
America ain't broke! The only thing that's broke is the moral compass of the rulers. And we aim to fix that compass and steer the ship ourselves from now on. Never forget, as long as that Constitution of ours still stands, it's one person, one vote, and it's the thing the rich hate most about America -- because even though they seem to hold all the money and all the cards, they begrudgingly know this one unshakeable basic fact: There are more of us than there are of them!
Madison, do not retreat. We are with you. We will win together.
"In a nation ruled by swine, all pigs are upwardly mobile -- and the rest of us are fucked until we can put our acts together: not necessarily to win, but mainly to keep from losing completely. We owe that to ourselves and our crippled self-image as something better than a nation of panicked sheep."
- Hunter S.Thompson
I'm not sure about how you feel, but NOAA is a pretty important government agency as far as this sailor is concerned...
Ya think?
So just what have our elected officials in Congress been up to this weekend?
Let's see...
They voted to continue giving $53 billion in oil subsidies...
Voted to strip funding from just about every EPA project, including air quality, emissions, and water pollution monitoring.
Stripped funds to administer the Affordable Care Act.
Even though the economy sucks, there are no shortage of possible income streams for those on boats with the right attitude and work ethic...
Since we work in the charter business I'll start with that area of the nautical workaday world. Right now, while true that the number of charter clients are way down, it might surprise some that it is also getting a lot harder for us to find good boats and crews for a lot of our clients who can still afford to charter these days. Fact is, we just had to remove another charter catamaran from our website as they simply did not have half a clue how to provide the sort of service that a client deserves, it being after all a service industry with a capital "S". I know we as charter brokers are always looking for new enthusiastic boats/crews with the right stuff!
While chartering is not for everyone and can be a highly demanding and very stressful 24/7 sort of job, the rewards, both personal and financial (though you won't ever get rich doing it), can be well worth the energy and investment.
By chartering I mean chartering your own boat and not working for one of the big bareboat/charter conglomerates more akin to MacDonanld's/KFC (Ya want fries with that dude?) sort of service and only missing the paper hats and hairnets. Such companies are a training ground for second and third rate crews which are something of a blight on the industry...
Then again, I'm told we are really picky about such things as putting quality and our clients enjoyment of their hard earned vacations first.
Some folks seem to have a preconceived idea of what the future is going to be. Some think the future will continue just like it is while others are thinking "Mad Max" dune buggies will be the order of the day...
Off hand, I'd say both of those camps are a few sandwiches short of a full tilt picnic and my guess is that in the not too distant future things are just going to be different (though, just maybe different with a capital "D"). Different is not always an apocalyptic thing but can be if you are incapable of rolling with the flow and not take advantage of opportunities presented...
Technology is a wonderful thing and for anyone who's been watching the tech world there is ample evidence of multiple glimmering silver linings in the approaching storm...
Way back when, JFK used a mistranslation of the Chinese word for crisis (wei-chi) in a speech because it contained the "wei" (a word that could mean danger) and "chi" (a word that could be construed to mean opportunity but only in a kinda/sorta way) and as a result everyone now thinks that the Chinese word for crisis or danger also means opportunity. The fact that it does not (without some serious massaging) hardly matters as JFK simply gave it a new meaning and it stuck. I only mention this because... Well, some of our Boat Bits readers can be seriously nit-picky folks... and it's fun to beat them to the punch!
But, in truth, crisis, danger, and even apocalypse always ride with opportunity of one sort or another and there will be silver linings. The trick is simply to be able to see and take advantage of them when they arrive...
So it goes...
Listening to Michael Nesmith make some sense (Roll With The Flow) on "Live at the Palais"
Paul Krugman voices the question that keeps me up at night while Crooks and Liars points to a timely study and Brilliant at Breakfast gives us a glimpse of the foreseeable future...
Sounds like the perfect time to dust off those sailing-off-into-the-sunset-dreams and get to doing!
Over at the Latts and Atts and Margaritaville forums, folks are upset with Jimmy Buffet because he said something or other about an ex-president. You can almost smell the burning Parrothead hats on the breeze...
That really depresses me and it just reinforces the feeling that "we are most certainly not in Kansas anymore" mindset that makes me wonder if I have somehow sailed to some alternate universe where everything is way off kilter and Barry Manilow just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his good works as the new Pope.
Yeah, seriously unreal kind of vibe as we all know that the Pope is not Barry Manilow but is, in fact, an ex-Hitler youth and what exactly does that say about our "real" reality?
History is an interesting thing and a tool of great power. A fact that those who do not take note of history and what has gone before should. History has a nasty knack of coming around and biting those on the ass who do not pay attention to it...
Offhand I'd say that Mr Buffet pays attention to history as it unfolds and for Jimmy to get where he is against all the odds it is a sure thing he is nobody's fool. If he said something I'd most likely listen. If for some reason it went against my world view, I'd pause for a moment and give it some thought and check it out because there is a better than even chance he'd be right.
The cruising community has no shortage of factions on a lot of subjects, and one that really seems to get people riled up is the whole cruising budget discussion. Over at Cruisers Forum there is a thread with over 200 posts on the subject of "Can you cruise on $500 a month" and the gist of the thread, as I read it, is some say you can and some say you can't.
Of course, it's not that simple and what bothers me is that it gets polarized and political which is never helpful as passions rise folks tend to quit thinking and before you know it people are telling people their mothers wear army boots!
The thing is both sides of the argument could learn from the other side to their own benefit and learning is always a good thing! The other problem is that once polarized it becomes political, and the less politics of cruising we have the better.
So where do I stand on the $500 a month cruising budget (me being Mr Cheapseats, need you ask) and is it doable?
Doable... for sure, and if done right, nowhere near the realm of dumpster diving, sacrifice and deprivation that those who pooh pooh the idea will point at. Those with some brain cells can even do it in something approaching style and luxury... as it is not at all about doing without but simply losing the waste and superfluous baggage we don't really need to carry around.
Which sort of brings up back to the political and polarization subject... If you are choosing to be cheap to prove someone wrong, make a point, or set a record, it's not going to be fun so why bother? Cruising should be fun and it should be done in style and comfort as life is simply too short not to make the best of it.
I've always liked the whole Rube Goldberg breakdown of system to try and get a handle on just how stuff affects other stuff whether it is on a boat system (like self steering) or any system that is complicated... Because it gives you the BIG PICTURE!
Of late, it is a pretty safe bet that those running the show (well at least those who profess they are running the show) don't even have a hint of what the big picture is anymore whether it is global warming, immigration, apparently endless war, how to deal with oil spills, or economics... Can you spell FUBAR?
Sort of like the world being run by the Three Stooges!
Which is why I miss the cartoons and drawings of Reuben Goldberg as he always showed the big picture and brought a smile or two in the process... and face it, the folks running the show apparently need visual aids!
What scares me is that this is just the sort of discussion that never ends. Way back when we were building our first boat (Reagan had just become president...) the discussion often turned to just how cheaply one could cruise. Not that I have anything against cruising cheaply but simply that over thirty odd years it does not seem like anything new has come into the discussion.
More often than not the discussion gets hijacked by people who think you should spend more money and others with throwing-money-at-the-problem sort of schemes which may even make sense on the surface... but look a little deeper and maybe not!
For instance, there is the guy who recommends in general practice that you replace your keel bolts "just in case" as down the line when you are cruising it will be insurance that you will not have to run up a big yard bill "out there". Of course logic would indicate you'd be running up a big yard bill here and now where the cost of getting boat work done is higher than you'd pay out cruising. Not that I am advising not replacing wonky keel bolts but if they don't need to be replaced it's not money well spent.
The fact is, you will never be able to cruise on a $500 a month budget by spending money to do it, as it's like spending your way out of debt and it simply does not work... If you do want to cruise on a $500 a month budget the first thing you have to abandon is the urge to spend money when you don't need to and the knee-jerk reaction of throwing money at problems... which is not so easy around boats!
There are a whole lot of people cruising quite happily on $500ish+ budgets and most of them are not too vocal about it as they simply have learned that if they were to mention said budget they would set themselves up for various lectures on how impossible it all is and how miserable they must be and as they are neither miserable or finding it impossible they tend to keep their budgets to themselves. Truth is a lot of the cheapseats cruisers we have known over the years seem to appear anything but cheapseats if they are doing it right and over beers at some beach bars the only ones who seem to complain about their money problems are the ones spending more rather than less... Think about that!
For those who need to see stuff in print that it is possible the Pardey's "Cost Conscious Cruiser" is both a good read and a solid investment.
Way back, when we first got into this sail-away-into-the-sunset gig, there was much discussion of helping make ends meet doing the barter thing. The idea that with a stock of fish hooks, fishing line and a cornucopia of t-shirts you could trade for the needful things in life and even make a profit process.
Over the years the subject still comes up from time to time with newbie folks and armchair sailors, but in truth, I have never met anyone who pulled it off. Maybe it is a different world, but when you are in the San Blas islands and they paddle out to sell you Molas the fact that they also come equipped these days with a credit card machine and take AMEX kind of puts a damper on trading a few fish hooks for the Mola idea...
A whole different world...
Then again, some folks in the USA think it is no bad idea to bring barter back in a big way as a way of dealing with the out of control health costs by putting it back on a barter level... Sort of a chicken standard.
As it happens, my brother-in-law has been raising chickens and building a chicken coop which is a project I've found very interesting and the odd "cunning plan" of livestock on "So It Goes" has flitted through my thoughts the last week or so...
The feline crew (Buffy and Willow) I think would be all over the idea as they are big fans of c-h-i-c-k-e-n and with the price of cat food being what it is, I can see a certain appeal in the overall budget.
Of course, figuring out the right size of chicken coop is no small feat as if it is going to provide for meals, trade goods and health care it becomes a rather significant project... scarily so!
As it turns out, the average cost per person of health care in the US of A is $7681 and as the current average cost of a chicken is $5.02, that means we would have to raise 1,530 chickens per person just to cover health care... YOWZA, we are going to need a bigger boat! For more on the cost of the whole chicken barter thing you might want to read it here.
So, obviously, turning "So It Goes" into a chicken farm would only work if I apply a Republican mindset to it and take collective leave of my senses... Damn, I was really looking forward to building a chicken coop.
I've always been interested in the whole living within our needs rather than wants thing and the whole small living spaces trend fills me with a certain amount of hope...
That said when I read about the project that Kevin Cyr is currently working on turning a shopping cart into a pop up camper I have to admire his thought process but the need for such a statement/project also fills me with no small amount of despair.
Anyone with half a brain who is not doing the Ostrich thing can see that more than a few systems are broken and FUBAR and SNAFU is the order of the day. So of course, designing for the homeless poor is something of a growth industry... Like I said despair.
There is hope of course and there are a lot of people doing the right thing (as opposed to our bought and paid for politicians) and they deserve our support.
Sadly these days a lot of things cost silly money and more than their share has the word "marine" attached!
For those of us firmly in the cheap seats, there are a lot of ways to bring costs down but I'm always surprised at just how expensive some stuff can be...
Take masts and rigging for instance! Seriously silly prices get thrown around for what is really just aluminum tubes and wire. Now in the cheap seats of course we know that we NEVER buy industrial stuff (like wire) from a purveyor of marine goods. Buying it from Acme wire who may not know a boat from a hole in the wall but certainly DO KNOW wire, is even more important because they are not in the world of silly marine pricing. They sell wire and other rigging stuff for what it's worth not what they can gouge which is often a huge difference!
The same line of thinking goes for chainplates and suchlike... Now that just about every city has some sort of CNC metal cutting operation you can make a drawing give it to a guy and have a perfectly cut and polished chainplate for just a little more than the cost of the metal value. I won't even mention the obscene pricing the last time I looked at chainplates from a marine store...
Masts, being low volume products with seriously high tooling costs are pretty silly price wise but you have to wonder how various mast builders always seem to have brand name masts with maybe a little scratch or cosmetic blemish in the anodizing for 10% of the retail price. Of course with masts being just hollow tubes there are all sorts of alternatives to marine industry spars... I've known more folks who built boats and wound up with light poles and suchlike that worked out just fine at a fraction of what it would cost to buy something from Francespar or the like.
Dudley Dix and CKD boats are even doing mast kits in... (Dare I say it?) ... Wood!
It might suprise a lot of folks but wood works real well for masts and in these days of epoxy and other evil chemicals, no longer falls prey to 99% of all the negative press... Check it out!
I'm never sure whether to describe myself as a film maker who sails or a sailor/boatbuilder who makes films...Either way I'm a pretty happy camper when all is said and done.
