All boats require significant upkeep. Even, or especially new boats. After awhile there is a period where you live off the systems that have stabilized, and that is nice, but even then it is a brief period. I’ve owned my current boat for 15 years, many systems I’m starting my third cycle of front to back overhaul now. There is very little I have not gone through at least once. My boat is 40 years old, but it has been fairly consistently maintained since new. I think the idea of ten years of low maintenance is a bit optimistic. I find most cycles are about half that, some go ten, but you never know which will and which won’t. Some plan on hiring work, but that’s not really a good plan for those planning long passages. My brain is hardwired for being self sufficient and I look at hired work as a pure luxury (and often in reality a frustration). I can’t imagine heading into a remote area without being fully prepared or with the intention that if anything goes wrong you just call someone.
Knock on wood. I’ve never had to call a tow. Absolute pure luck in a couple instances, but then I’ve sawed my fair share of lines out of the prop. Changed props, shafts in the water. Have flown out parts by seaplane a couple times. I’ve rescued quite a few others who had the notion of just calling someone, some just needed to know how to bleed a diesel, any diesel. Some didn’t understand what/why they had battery switches. Anyway, I guess if you form all your opinions from frequently helping the helpless, you get more than a bit cynical. That’s mostly bad and certainly distorted. But deep down, when I see newb boaters with beautiful big boats, having a hard time docking or anchoring with a huge attitude, talking about having taken all the classes and just having a hard time seeing the easy truths... Yeah, it’s a bit of a over generalization, and yet I’m so so often disappointed that every time I try to keep an open mind, it just turns out the same way, badly. Dreamers go big, have unrealistic expectations and within a year or season 2 get enough confidence, wind up scaring themselves silly, or just having such a bad time that they sell the boat. I think a lot of them would have made it if they simply adjusted the grey matter between their ears and not insisted that the world/nature play by their own self determined rules. Just seems too common of an outcome. I think everyone needs to try to do as much as they can, even if you don’t wind up doing it yourself, you still need to understand how things really work. It’s the ones that refuse to even try that wind up doing stupid stuff and lead to their own unhappiness. It’s ultimately not about how much you know. Everybody starts needing to learn, and frankly that never ends. It’s about being able and willing to learn and being willing to judge your own capability. The ones with the big expensive boats that know nothing are the absolute worst of the worst. Entitled and ignorant doesn’t work out well when trying negotiate your way with Mother Nature who doesn’t give a crud that you have a lifelong skill of bs’ing everyone else.
Actually, I think Mother Nature is a huge part of what I personally like about boating. Reminds us all of just how insignificant we are and how much everything else just doesn’t matter at all. Not everybody needs to enjoy that but if you are selling everything, spending big money and likely have a problem with that, it’s probably not going to work out.
