That depends, are you keeping it?

I would just like to vent for a second.

Over the last few weeks I have talked to a lot of people and overheard a lot of conversations people have been having around me at the boat yard. One phrase I have been asked a lot and I have heard tossed around all the time is "Are you going to keep it?" As in, they're asking whether the person intends on keeping the boat for their own selfish boating needs, or if they're going to palm it off onto some poor unsuspecting person some time in the future. This really really irritates me. Because it always comes up when people are asking advice or talking about how they should do certain things.

"How should i fix this?"
"That depends, are you going to keep it?"

The question implies that they are going to be given different advice dependent on whether or not their boat is for keepsies. If you're just going to sell it, chuck a shitty patch on it and paint over it. If you're going to keep it, I guess you should fix it up good. With sanding and cleaning and filler and more sanding and paint. And I bet this question is what got us in the situation we're in now.

Dodgy repairs and patches and nasty crap that somebody could have taken an extra hour to fix properly and have it last forever, instead of doing it badly and have it last a year or two. I don't understand this at all. We spent years scrimping and saving and planning and dreaming before we found this boat and decided it was going to be ours. We've put our hearts and sweat and tears into it. I can't imagine intentionally making the boat dodgy, and then palming it off onto some other poor bugger whose heart is set on acquiring the perfect boat. To be fair, our problems weren't from the previous owners - they only had the boat for four years, and you're supposed to strip it every 10. They weren't dodgy, just a little bit negligent. Mostly because they didn't really need to strip it - it had to be done in the future, and it would have been a lot of work they didn't need to do. Sand it, chuck on some antifouling, and it will keep going. It was probably whoever owned it before them who messed it all up. Under all the layers of antifouling were so many dodgy repairs. Like they just didn't care. As if they were just fixing it up temporarily and were planning on selling it in the future.

To whoever that guy was, I hate you. And to all other people like him. I hate you too. The glass over my keel is mostly peeling off from bad repairs and it took me three weeks to make the hull pretty again after what you did to it. So I hope karma bites you on the ass.

-Monique