Dick Greenwood's Blog

I read the trade papers—of course, the word “papers” is a tad inaccurate, since I read them online; but you know what I mean—and couldn’t help but chuckle today when I read this:  “The Palm Beach Marine Flea Market and Seafood Festival is set for Feb. 26-28 at the Palm Beach Kennel Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.”  You get the joke don’t you?  Come to think of it, I wonder if the organizers got it…  Holding a “flea market” at a kennel club seems a bit like bringing coals to Newcastle if you ask me.  You’re not laughing, are you?  Do we even use the idiom “it’s like bringing coals to Newcastle” anymore?  Maybe I should just let it go.  Still, I can’t help wondering what they serve for food at the kennel club.  Sorry, I’ll try to behave.

Generally, despite some odd choices of venues and even odder descriptions, the boating industry seems to be picking up.  At least that what the trades will have us believe.  I’m all for believing positive things, so I’m happy.  As I read, I find that more and more marine-related  businesses and manufacturers are hiring people back, that they’re introducing new product lines, and that attendance at events is on the upswing.  All of that sounds good to me.

I wish I understood the economy, I really do.  I was watching television last night and two journalists were having a very frowny conversation—I just made up the word “frowny”; hope you don’t mind—about the “state of the economy.”  They kept talking about the “disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street.”  After about five minutes, I have to admit, my eyes glazed over and I decided I must live on Back Street.  I didn’t have a scintilla of an idea of what they were talking about. 

Here’s the way I see it:  Wall Street folks are mostly interested in lining their pockets; Main Street folks are mostly interested in mending the holes in their pockets; Back Street denizens are just thankful to have pockets.  When I hear of someone being paid $3 million in a bonus, I ask myself, “Why wouldn’t he take that money and immediately retire?”  To most of us, $3 million dollars would ensure a nice retirement.  “Nice” hell!  It would provide us a luxurious retirement.  But that’s Main Street thinking.  For a Wall Street thinker $3 million dollars is “bonus money”; that money would only whet the appetite for more.  Of course, those of you who are my neighbors on Main Street and Back Street know the sting of where that $3 million dollars comes from.  We know it comes from higher mortgage rates, higher interest rates on our credit cards, higher gas prices.  In our heart of hearts we know that we’re kicking in that $3 million dollars.

But I’m still happy that things are taking a positive turn.  Let the folks in Florida have their flea market with the hounds; they’ve suffered through this mess with the rest of us non-Wall Street chumps.  With any luck things will continue to get better, 2010 will be a dynamite year, I’ll sell my boat and buy that new one I’ve been lusting after, and everything will be hunky-dory.  No matter how good it gets, however, I still don’t want to sample the fare at the kennel club.

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 I hate getting involved in the up and down discussion of the “boating industry.”  To me boating is a sport, a pastime, a love that has very little to do with dollars and cents.  (I’m struggling to resist the temptation to mention how little sense we have to be so willing to part with our cents, but I’ll try to resist.  Wait a minute!  I just did it, didn’t I?)  But as much as I hate it, it still comes up in so many conversations, that I’d be remiss to ignore it completely.

The other day I was talking with Woody at Haven Harbour—I know I bust on Woody in my column, but he’s really a very sage character, someone who has an exceptionally keen insight into the boating scene from all angles—and Woody was telling me how Haven Harbour is coping with the downturn in the economy.  It was pretty interesting to hear.  In case you don’t know it, Haven Harbour, where I’ve kept my boat for the past three years, is an upscale marina, focused on the total experience.  It has a pool, food service, fuel docks, lots of bathrooms, you name it.  It’s really top shelf, and I’m not writing an ad here, only trying to establish Woody’s “creds.”

So we’re talking and I asked him how they were coping with the downturn.  His response was a bit surprising:  “We’re marketing harder.  We’re going to more boat shows, selling the services that we always provide—bow thruster installations, paint jobs, re-powering, etc.—and working with people to see that this is a good time to get these things done.”  It was such a sensible approach, that I thought it noteworthy.  Sometimes common sense is overcome by panic, but they’ve turned a down situation into an opportunity and, in the process, found a way to avoid layoffs or cutbacks in the hours of their staff.

What brings this to my immediate attention here is a piece I just read in Trade Only, an online newsletter that comes out every day, highlighting the current events and thinking in the “boating industry.”  As I said, I don’t like getting involved in such grown-up conversations, but today’s installment caught my attention with an article about the necessity of cutting back on the number of boat shows.  Right now, the author noted, there are about 300 boat shows put together each year.  He, along with others in the industry, suggests that 90 would be a better number. 

I have to admit that I’m of two minds on this issue.  On the one hand I think there’s a lot of sense in that.  Given the cost—we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars for each dealer—spent on entering these shows, I can appreciate that the ROI isn’t what they’re hoping for.  But then the boater guy in me, the guy who feels good just being on the dock and being able to go on a lot of boats I could never own, being able to go on and run my hand over the woodwork and drool over the electronics, says, “Hey, wait a minute!  Does that mean you’d cancel the Bay Bridge Show so people are forced to go to the Annapolis show?  Or vice versa?  Does that mean you’d cancel that nice little show in Timonium or the larger one in Baltimore?

What exactly does it mean?  I think I know the answers.  What do you think?

I don’t know what anyone else does during the off-season, but my boating related-time will mostly focus on the Coast Guard Auxiliary.  I’ve been a member for four years now and am continually impressed with how much the organization gets out of volunteers.  I, for example, serve as the Deputy Director for Education, helping to improve and expand the public education offerings of the organization.  In the Department we have a national staff of about 50 people, men and women from all over the country, who work together to get the job done.  We’re a virtual organization; we almost never meet one another, but we work together as if our desks were in the same room.

Many of us are teachers or retired teachers; all of us are focused on one thing:  promoting safe boating.  That’s a fairly lofty mission, but none of the folks I’ve met or talked with have a “holier than thou” attitude; most just believe in what they’re doing and are willing to do the work it takes.  Right now I’m working on a training unit that we’ll send out to all the districts; hopefully, they’ll use it to improve the quality of the instruction.

Earlier this summer my project was helping to move our boating skills and seamanship course through the NASBLA—that’s the acronym for “National and State Boating Law Administrators, the group that works to ensure some degree of uniformity in boating laws—approval process.  It’s hard to tell what I’ll be doing next.  You probably know that the U.S. Power Squadron (USPS) also offers courses.  There’s not much difference in the offerings of the two organizations.  The Power Squadron usually uses the same textbooks we use, and they also have to get NASBLA approval.  The thing I like, and a major reason why I joined the Auxiliary, is that if you’re a member of the Auxiliary you can take the courses for free.  “Free” is one of my favorite words; comes right after “deep discount” in my list of loved words.

No matter which organization you take a safe boating course from, I can’t overemphasize the value of taking one.  The statistics showing how the boating accident and fatality rates soar among boaters who’ve never had a safe boating course are enough to make any thinking person take note.  Don’t take my word for it.  Google “boating safety statistics” and see for yourself.  After you’ve done that, add up the time you have available over the winter, think about how nice it is to be spending time with other boaters, then sign up for a course.  You can usually find a schedule of courses by Googling—how did we ever get along without Google?—“Coast Guard Auxiliary,” or go directly to www.cgaux.org, and follow their links to the nearest flotilla and courses.  Your Winter will be more tolerable, and come Spring you’ll be less likely to become a statistic.

Am I the only person in the world who’s being driven crazy by “systems” that purport to be intended to make my life easier?  The biggest, and for me the most irritating, offender is the voice mail systems that seem to have been installed in every business’s contact chain. This past week, owing to a computer virus I got a month ago from which I’ve been unable to fully recover, my computer is given to stopping and rebooting in the middle of a job or a Skype call, I decided to end my 31 year relationship with PCs and bought a Mac.

When I asked the Mac salesman if the new machine would accept my Adobe software, he told me there would be no problem at all. I asked him the same question, changing the wording only slightly each time, three times. Every time he promised me a problem-free changeover. I don’t have to tell you what happened, do I? So on Friday, when I was supposed to be writing, I spent the day talking with Adobe. “Talking” is a bit of an optimistic euphemism in this case. I spent about five and a half hours on the phone; of that time I probably spent three hours on hold and one hour saying, “I’m sorry, but I can’t understand you.  Would you please repeat that.” I spoke with a really nice person who was in Manila, a polite guy who was in India, and another well-spoken fellow who was somewhere in the U.S.

None of them could ever really help me. It seems that because I upgraded my software online and don’t have disks, I have to buy an upgrade for the previous version so that they can send me disks that I can then use to convert from PC to Mac. If that sounds convoluted to you, you should hear it when you have 3 hours of elevator music echoing in your head. We did come close to making headway with one program. They told me the disk I had was designed to run on either PC or Mac, so I asked if they’d stand by while I uploaded it. They agreed and I began the process.

After only a couple of minutes my Mac told me the upload was complete. I gave out a small cheer and asked the telephone rep if he would wait while I tried to run the program. He said he would.  When I tried to run it, I got an error message. Having been on the phone about four hours at this time, I almost cried and asked him what he thought was wrong. He told me he couldn’t help me but would transfer me to a technician. After waiting another 15 minutes, more elevator music, the technician came on. I explained how my day had gone, how I’d been lied to and passed from one person to another, and what my current problem was. He listened very calmly; then he said, “I understand. Now, sir, I can help you with this problem, but we’ll be on service time.” I thought I knew but still asked him what “service time” means.  He told me, politely and with a sweet, calm voice, “That means you will have to pay $20 per minute for technical assistance.”

Children may read this blog, so I won’t tell you what I told him he could do with his assistance.  Whatever happened to “Hi, my name is Dorothy.  How may I help you?”