...plus a million things I still don't know. That's what I learned last night.

See, I stayed up until 4:30 last night reading every article on this page and this page. I'm serious; I read them all.

My head (no pun intended) is awash (err...) with tales of woe and doom. But I found it very informative. Knowing what not to do was, I think, what was putting me off. It's not very hard to spend $50,000 and through omission of action wind up with exactly $0. Hearing about what's bad enables you to think about what needs to be good. It's a lot of work, too, keeping everything in order. Except now it's not mysterious, what needs to be done.

Plus, I know more about galvanism and electrolysis and pumping and amp-hours and hull-throughs than I ever thought I would. So that was a cool brain-load last night. Made for a tired day, though.

I still think that I'm going to start slow, renting bare charters for a while, until I get the basics down. It pays to hang around the marina, listening to folks who aren't selling things. Besides it'll still get me out on the water and exploring so that's cool.

After reading all that last night, I was sort of thinking way back to that VW Squareback I built right after high school. If I didn't turn a wrench at least once every 3,000 miles, I'd break down somewhere for certain (including one time on the Goldan Gate Bridge at 4:30 on a Friday; that was a fun time). The car would just get mad at me for my inattentive ways and would not put up with me anymore until I gave it the care it desired. After a while I found myself getting bored and gapping valves and replacing points or fuel filters just because it was "Sunday".

I get the feeling that the same sorts of things are involved in boating. There's lots of putzing around with various maintenance-style tasks, it seems. About as much time is spent fiddling and maintaining as actual on-the-water boating, it looks like. But being a handy guy who likes to tinker, that's fine by me. I still think it'll be fun. Better use of time than video games, anyway...