On choosing boats designs and suchlike...

Lose a thousand votes here, a thousand there and pretty soon you have a new president, something well worth listening to, and a moment to consider a tattoo in hindsight...

This morning, while I had my first needful cup of coffee, I found my thoughts caught up in a strange mixture involving boat design and presidential politics... A pretty odd mix.

One thing that surfaced in my thoughts was how choosing a boat design was mostly a lot better than choosing a president.

I currently have a short list of boats I'd like to build or own and I'm pretty sure, if you read Boat Bits on a semi-regular basis, you do as well. One thing that all of the boats on my short list share is that they are all excellent boat designs and the real problem of the choosing what to build dilemma is more of a plethora of excellence rather than the fact that one design is better than the others... So many great boats and so little time.

Of course, if choosing a boat to build was like the current state of picking a president it would be a whole lot easier. The downside is whichever boat you'd choose would be crappy but the choice between a really really bad design and a not very good one is actually pretty easy... You simply choose the one that's not quite as bad as the other.

That said, only an insane person would choose to build a bad boat because it is not quite as bad as another on purpose. Any sane person would look for a better design or not build a boat at all.

It's funny how insanity in boat building is just the same old same in politics these days... As a Virgin Islander, for once, I'm actually glad that I'm a second class citizen and don't get to vote for president this time around.


Listening to Dave Mason

So it goes...