The main two I speak of are called "Old Salts", I believe that is the nomenclature. They have been around boating for way too long and probably sailed a few times as well. Actually they have probably spent too much time at sea. They don't have a lot of good things to say and the world always seems to fighting against their life's progression.
Our first guy we met, we will call him Mickey, he was down on his luck. The poor guy was having issues with his steel sailboat. I think it was a sailboat. His boat was "on the hard", in a boat marina on land being worked on. He seemed to have an issue with the diesel cooling tubes he had installed a while back. Mind you these steel 2 inch tubes were outside his boat right next to the keel and ran the length of the boat. The idea being, pass the diesel fuel through the tubes and cool the diesel so it....runs better, I have no idea. The first thought was engine cooling, maybe one of them were engine cooler and one diesel cooler. He did not want to have any salt water come into his boat, so he welded pipes onto the bottom of the boat and ran hot fluids through them to have them cooled by the sea water. Most boats take the sea water in, pass through a heat exchanger and send it back out warmer. Not Mickey. The boat yard people were pretty amazed at the set up as well.
But Mickey's real problem was finding a decent welder to fix the problem. To his credit, he managed to find the 3 worst welders in town. The problem is it costs money to sit in a boat yard, a lot of money. So he was burning through money he did not have to get his boat fixed. The last time we saw him was when we left the marina after we launched our boat. We did go back a week later and he was gone. We figured he was there 2 weeks. His next stop was Honduras or Nicaragua, it was cheap to live there.
The next guy was a Russian we met here at legend point. He didn't have a lot of good things to say in Russian, I got the translated version. He was telling stories to Marina that one does not like to write about. The kind of stories that will scare you from ever leaving the dock. We also believe he thought I was taking Marina against her will on this boat. He questioned me as well as Marina about this. Nope...we are both idiots :-)
He purchased his boat in Antigua and came back to the US with a few unexpected stops along the way.
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