Each year here at Indian Lake, they put on a boat show. They trot out a mega-load of brand new boats and put discounted prices on them. There are several reasons to put on a boat show.
It’s good for the local economy. People come from miles around to look at the new boats. Local businesses put gas in their cars and food in their bodies. Folks will stop in at some of the local shops and purchase trinkets they don’t need but really want. People get to come out and have a good time for an entire day. But the most important reason to have a boat show is to separate you from thousands of dollars of your money. Granted you’ll have a new boat but unless you have a spare $25,000 to $125,000 just burning a hole in your pocket, you and a bank are going to be in bed together for several years.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad deal if you can make the payments, you really like boats, and you have another 2-3 grand in cash to throw at the boat each year. These costs encompass engine preventative maintenance, dock and storage fees, replacement parts for broken and lost stuff, and other miscellaneous stuff like licenses, gas and insurance.
Boats are adult toys. They don’t vibrate but they do take batteries and they make your hand shake when something breaks and you’re reaching for your wallet.
Boats are a lot of fun.
You can put a lot of friends on them and go zooming around the lake. This is where you hope someone gets sick and heaves their lunch over the side. That has never happened on my boat but one can always hope.
Ours is set up for fishing and my Excellent Half loves to fish. And catching $20 worth of fish is worth the thousands you’ll spend to make that happen. As for me, I’ll go fishing at Kroger.
You get to brag about how you have a boat. You can revel in the envy others show when you tell them you have a boat and how their life is simply not fulfilled since they don’t have a boat. These unenlightened envious souls have no idea what it costs to own a boat. In some weird way you want them to buy a boat hoping that shared financial misery will somehow make you feel better.
When you see a boat with a 350 horsepower motor you get to act all superior when you say that no one needs to go that fast. Of course secretly you really want that huge motor and to go that fast.
When you finally sell your boat, you get to look with pity on those poor saps who still have a boat. You know what it’s costing them.
So Tuesday we went out to the boat show. We stopped at a couple of places and looked at the new and gloriously shiny pontoon and tritoon boats.
If you don’t know what a pontoon/tritoon boat is count yourself lucky. A pontoon boat consists of two really long aluminum barrels bolted together using metal bits and 8’ sheets of marine grade plywood. They strap a big-arsed motor to the contraption and, to give you the illusion of control, they put a steering wheel on the whole thing. To make it pretty, they put a shiny metal fence along the outside and scatter the inside with seats made with eye-catching colors. There are tables, barbeque grills, bimini tops, and all manner of stuff you can place on a pontoon. The pontoon itself rides on the top 6-10 inches of water and has a tendency to bounce in even the slightest chop. You do not want to be stationary on a pontoon when the lake gets 1-2 foot waves. A pontoon has two “toons”, one on the right side and one on the left side. A tritoon has three toons with the third one in the middle of the other two. It’s not floaty enough with two toons; you have to make it even more bouncy with three toons.
The boats we looked at had shiny prices. And let me tell you, the dealers really, really liked their boats. Some of the prices were so high that, while I wouldn’t need Bill Gates money, I would darn sure want Warren Buffett money.
We looked at boats that had prices north of One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. We had no intention of purchasing a boat that costs more than our house, but it’s fun to look. Motor sizes were 350 to 450 horsepower. I personally think is a bit much on a lake that averages 5-6 feet in depth. What that means is that I really want that set up but I would have to interrupt my grocery intake to afford it.
Boats that are between $50,000 to $99,000 are similarly out of reach, but again, still fun to look at and we looked at a lot of them. Differences between all of the boats are the length, seating positions, size of the motor, and the quality of the materials used.
The ones we could afford are in the $30,000 to $45,000 price range. The interest rate was in the 5’s and we could finance a new boat for so long that we could literally die of old age before it’s paid off. (Of course if that happens, it automatically becomes someone else’s problem.)
We went so far as to sit down with a salesman and start paperwork. Fortunately, we needed to go home to get some information from the house, so we left in the middle of the paperwork and put a hold on the boat. We said that we would come in later to put a down payment on it.
When we got home we got a “blue book” price on the boat we own (along with the bank). We are right-side-up by quite a bit, so we could pay it off and have an even larger down payment. Then my Excellent Half asked, “Do we need this boat?” I said, “No. We have a boat.” I really wasn’t looking forward to signing up for a 10-15 year loan and I could tell the shiny was wearing off for my Excellent Half too. We looked at each other, smiled, and felt the relief you feel when your Guardian Angel helps you make a really smart decision.
She called the dealership and thanked them for their time and while we wanted a new boat, it wasn’t going to happen today. A new boat was going to be sometime in our future. Hopefully, “sometime in our future” our Guardian Angel will help us make the smart decision.
Retired at Indian Lake 