Something important about the postal system, some thoughts on Vonnegut & Slaughterhouse Five, and in the "a mind-boggling waste of government resources" department...
The other day a reader dropped me a line suggesting that he'd really like to see a weekly post on good deals on sailboats to be found on eBay. As it happens, he is not the first reader to suggest such a thing.
Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of eBay these days as most things tend towards being overpriced, of questionable quality and far too many of the sellers give off a Spidey-sense inducing miasma.
That said, I'm bored and my boat task for the day is not on my "Oh fun" list, so why not?
The first boat to catch my eye is a Sparkman & Stephens designed Chris Craft 26 that looks OK. It's opening bid is already a bit higher than I'd spend for a boat sight unseen but it's in the ballpark and a very nice pocket cruiser you could go anywhere you cared to. Certainly a better buy than a Flicka for sale in the same 20-27 foot category.
There's an Iroquois catamaran for sale that I'm pretty sure has been for sale for ages and, while I really love the Iroquois design, $45K is just silly for a fifty-year-old boat that, at most, should cost less than $19K.
Sadly, in today's listings, it pretty much comes down to the Chris Craft as all the boats I looked at have way too expensive asking prices and, considering it's nearly impossible to do the required due diligence, it's pretty much just a suckers game.
By the way, my first rule when considering eBay boats is not to spend more than the resale value of the ballast and, last I looked scrap lead is worth about a dollar a pound.
With that being the case the best place to look for a good deal on a boat these days is Craig's List. Sure there are bad overpriced boats on Craig's List but, overall, it is a whole lot better than eBay. You also might want to check out Search Tempest as it makes searching for boats on CL by area a lot easier.
Listening to a Marvin Gaye cover
So it goes...
Bruce+
1 day ago
