Notices by legumancer Davy (legumancer@tech.lgbt)

@JoscelynTransient everything since 7 feels like it's out to get me.

@goatsarah from what I've read, there's not much difference between a packed long distance flight and all those people driving the same distance one per vehicle. It's going really far that consumes tons of carbon.

I hope that keeping my car travel to a minimum does something to offset the yearly transatlantic flight to see my family. I'm able to do just about everything except medical appointments and buying gardening supplies by foot or bike here, which wasn't feasible in the US. (Designing towns to be accessible for non-drivers goes so much farther than treating transport as an individual choice, I think.)

@goatsarah @whalecoiner @zoe our first boat was an open 13 foot daysailer with a daggerboard and badly worm out sails, that we didn't know enough to know we're past usefulness. We had a great sail onto Irondequoit Bay and then had to paddle back because she couldn't tack even a little bit upwind. Another time we tried to go out onto Lake Ontario and nearly capsized in the channel out if the bay because we weren't prepared for the sudden change in wind speed - I had to stand up and yank the sail down the mast while Mike leaned out to counterbalance so we didn't flip over.

We had a blast with that $300 boat, and I'm so glad we made our mistakes on a craft small enough to paddle, tow by hand, and probably even tow while swimming if there'd been no other way to get moving. I think I'm done living on boats (not that boat, a boat with an inside) but it'd be fun to have something with a sail that fits on a jet ski trailer again.

@whalecoiner @goatsarah not even normal rich. Sailing has a rich people hobby reputation because it *used* to be expensive, before the invention of fiberglass boats. Wood boats required a lot more labor to build, and we're way out of reach as a hobby for most people. Then in the 70s and 80s several large builders got really good at mass producing boats (Catalina and Hunter in the US, Beneteau in Europe, and a bunch of mid size makers too). They sold a ton of them to middle class people who didn't have the money for something more traditional and customized, and we're willing to gamble on whether the fiberglass boats would last.

It turns out, fiberglass hulls last practically forever if they don't have manufacturing defects or crash into anything. The market is absolutely flooded with old but seaworthy (for coastal waters) boats, from as far back as 1960s. There's a healthy used market for parts (from scrapped boats and wealthier sailors' old equipment when they upgrade), too.

@whalecoiner @goatsarah The boat builders hadn't expected their mass produced fiberglass boats to be as durable as they were, and in the 90s and even moreso in the 2000s they found it impossible to sell new boats to sailors on a budget when old boats that sail just fine once you scrub the mildew out could be had for a few thousand or free. So they went upmarket again, building ever fancier and more expensive boats and driving the overall industry to market mainly to the rich again. But all those shoestring sailors are still out there.

There's probably more of them in Europe than the US, too. Most American marinas ban living aboard at the dock, and anywhere warm enough that you'd want to has a state level ban. There's less of that in Europe, so people who work in coastal cities where they can't afford housing live on these sorts of boats. It's like a mobile home with less space but (if the engine still works or you know how to dock under sail) more fun.

@goatsarah it's great that no one is stuck with that as their only option long-term

@goatsarah that's really, really great. In the US you've got to call around to every marina nearish your job to find the one or two that don't ban liveaboards, or require a certain newness or size of boat to be allowed to live aboard. I'm not familiar with the European sailing scene and by moored (in the other thread) I thought you meant living on a mooring ball like people do near San Francisco.

@goatsarah oh totally. In the marinas I was in, a whole lot of boats were older, and the shiny ones were still 10+ years old but owned by people who were retired or part time and could keep them up. There weren't many other liveaboards, but that's more because in places where you can comfortably live aboard year round in the US the marinas tend to ban it.

@goatsarah @mwl I was the bougie version of this for a few years (in that we had jobs and a place to dock).

@mwl the yachts they're wrecking are also "yacht as in non-commercial sailboat" (many from the 80s are still solid and sailing, can cost a couple thousand or nothing, and serve as homes for people who can't afford rent, or love the sea but can't afford to live on the coast otherwise) boats, not the more commonly discussed "yacht as multi million dollar party vessel" boats.

@goatsarah actually yeah I guess that's a fair point.

@goatsarah I think sadistic is anthropomorphizing, but the rest of this is accurate. My husband and I lived on a 1990s sailboat for a few years. She was technically a "yacht" because any recreational vessel is a yacht (and it's still classed as recreational if you live there), but we also got turned away from repair yards because they "only work on yachts" (the other, fancy boat definition).