and just how long did it take for Odysseus to make his passage?

Some more of the same old same, you can never underestimate the "DUMB" factor, and a Simmons of interest...

I noticed that Jimmy Cornell has a new trans-Atlantic rally going called the Atlantic Odyssey with two crossings of the Atlantic west to east scheduled for the coming season.

Now, I've mentioned before, I'm not a huge fan of cruising rallies and suchlike but I do really admire Jimmy Cornell's thought process in sorta/kinda getting people to pay him money to do something that people could do on their own without having to buy a ticket.

The fact is that before the ARC and such things existed, folks tended to cross and do all of the rally stuff all on their own. Every year folks would sail down to the Canaries to wait for a crossing window and interact with each other (Posse up), share knowledge (those who were clueless would interact with folks who could clue them in), and do the social thing (often spelled P-A-R-T-Y). All in all, a pretty excellent situation...

Jimmy Cornell was a lot smarter than the rest of us as he figured out how to get folks to pay him to do what they, more than likely, would have done anyway. Face it, the ARC really was a brilliant intuitive leap and I'll be the first to admit that I'm a bit jealous because I did not come up with the idea myself.

Of course, now I'm older, much more curmudgeonly, and cheaper (if that's actually possible) so every year I find the idea of ticket required organized play dates for adults (with the added chance of getting T-boned at the rally start) not only something to not do but to avoid being anywhere near.

Just saying...

By the way, maybe it's just me, but having read my share of Greek mythology and Homer, anything with the word odyssey in the title smacks of prime territory for nautical superstition given the luck of Odysseus...

Listening to King Tuff

So it goes...

One born every minute... and a snake oil alert

As I peruse the cyber online marine world and shopping for a couple of needful bits for "So It Goes" I happened on to a couple of products that engendered serious WTF moments...

Being that I have been planning to get an iPad, anything of a marine and iPad nature triggers my attention and lo and behold I see that the Outback Marine Store is selling a panel mount system for an iPad. Being a lazy fellow I look closer because avoiding getting out a bit of plastic, scrap teak or cypress, and the router to build a trim ring involves work and, like all lazy folks everywhere, I do try and avoid that four-letter word whenever possible.

What do I find but a pretty nicely done trim ring of sorts (but hardly deserving the moniker of a system) and available in both flush (well nearly flush) and surface mount... The WTF moment occurred when I looked at the price of $365 for the surface mount and $295 for the flush mount... Yowza! For perspective, the cost of the panel mount is over half the cost of the 32GB iPad... YOWZA indeed!

As I said, I'm one seriously lazy dude when all is said and done but I'm also one seriously CHEAP dude as well. You can see that I am somewhat torn between two primal forces.

So, let's see... I have some just-like-starbord plastic (I'm way too cheap to buy that plastic with a marine name stuff when the same stuff is available for 10% of the marine price) laying about that I think I spent about $15 bucks for, a router and a bunch of router bits so I could do a panel mount trim ring in about an hour and a half with most of that being the cleanup that turning on the router on the boat engenders. So the cost to build my own would not be excessive and while it does require a bit of work, it only requires a little, so the fight between lazy and cheap is something of a no-brainer!

To make it clearer, when you apply the Cruzan Black Strap formula to the problem we quickly see that by not buying the panel mount unit and doing it myself I can go out and buy over forty liter bottles of Cruzan Black Strap rum with the money left over (and that dear readers is one helluva PARTY)!

Actually doing a trim ring is so easy that I'll admit it kicks in my pyratical side and fills my head with that old quote "There is a sucker born every minute" that almost makes me want to join the pyratical hordes fleecing unwary boat folk. That said, the truth is while making over-priced trim rings is not hard work, fleecing people is! So I will sit and contemplate snake oil, nerve tonics and forty-one bottles of rum instead...

Listening to "Tent" by the Bonzo Dog Band.

So it goes...