Just need to vent...

gag gifts - just make me so angry ! My mon gave my dad a desert plate sized blue painted tin placard with a 1/4 manila rope border around the edge. It's inscription was " a boat is a hole in the water into which one pours money". It hung in the family 25 ft. 1935 Chris Craft Streamline Cruiser for about 10 years while money was poured into it,

 

My dad owned a 32' twin screw Owens Cabin Cruiser which was welded to the dock of my Uncle's Marina for 10 years during my childhood.

It left the dock under it's own power exactly twice.
Once when we went out for a day trip as a family, and once when my sweet mom had the gas dock attendants fetch it from the slip and she took it out for an afternoon alone after she 'shared her thinking' with my dad about ROI.
Being a somewhat know-it-all lad (then as now) of 15 years I bet my mom that I could get the boat under way unassisted.
My dad 'read the room' and it was sold VERY shortly thereafter!
Dad got the boat nearly free and sold it the same way.
A painful lesson learned, if not cheaply.

Two happiest days of a boat owners life.....
(IYNYN)

Stern Shot:
Boats are hard for some people (mostly dudes) to resist!
I was pondering just now what I might have done if I had been presented with an opportunity to inherit that same boat .....

 

as are over-the-top - head turning cars. They are opportunities to wastefully drop a ton of money into.
.