Fishing boats. Shaking my head as I say it. "There are two good days when you have a boat," is what my father-in-law used to tell me. "The day you buy it, and the day you sell it."
Well, there are a lot more good days ahead for those who are selling fishing boats right now. I have seen 20 year old boats advertised at thousands more than they cost new. The reason, according to my wife, is that people who buy boats are idiots. This is what she told me when I bought my first one. She has promised to say it in a much more intense way if I choose to buy one now...with the exorbitant prices out there right now.
My first boat was a socially responsible one. I got a rescue boat...one that had been rescued from the bottom of Lake of the Woods. I should have known better, but the price was right...zero dollars! All it needed was a trailer and a motor.
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| Not actual photo...my boat was in much worse shape! |
The motor and trailer only set me back about $1300.00. Then of course there was licensing the boat which was about 80 bucks as I recall...and replacing the floor...and buying new cables...and replacing the floor again...and a cover...and another cover when that first one got destroyed...and...well, I guess you could say I just backed my wallet up to that little bundle of joy and emptied it into the boat's yawning, unfillable coffers.
That all was twenty years ago. I am still not sure if my investment was paid back by the dozen or so adventures I had on Lake of the Woods and the Rainy River. It is best not to think too hard on those things.
Now retirement is looming for me. Seven years is all it will be until I can spend days and weeks and months doing what I like most...writing for the Wannaskan Almanac...I mean fishing. So the itch to get a boat has once again started irritating me, like a psoriasis for my brain that blocks my ability to think straight. Covid has created a shortage of new boats which has driven up the prices on used boats. That is what they say is going on (whoever "they" are) but I figure that peoples' brains are addled from too much time inside with their spouses so they are paying unreal prices for boats.
I am sure I can wait this out. Prices will return to normal, they just have to. If not, well, I can just go diving on Lake of the Woods and find another rescue boat. I am sure that "free" when it comes to boats means exactly what I think it does!
I'm sometimes at a loss for names of people; events that happened recently; why I went to a particular room in our house just then; what day I left my 'new' ATV off at the shop, Wannaska, less than a month of when I purchased it; important things on the grocery list; but I remember that boat you bought for free, still dripping/draining/listing on the trailer outside your father-in-law's shop; its wood parts shrinking/drying/cracking before our very eyes and how proud you were of it the day they set it on your trailer -- and what, in your little mind, it was going to look like 'all cleaned up.'
ReplyDeleteHowever, I believe it was your mother-in-law (not your father-in-law) who said, "There are two good days when you have a boat. The day you launch it, and the day you sell it." The latter of which, the 38' sailboat Indian Summer, she finally sold down in Florida for a song. Any of which listed here was appropriate:
https://songselect.ccli.com/search/results?List=theme_Joy&PageSize=100&CurrentPage=2