Part of the little joy of buying a new an complex boat is learning how it all works out. Eleven years ago, describing my knowledge of boats as “clueless” would be an insult to all the “clueless” boat owners that still managed to get on the water, have a good time, and come back with themselves in the boat in more or less one piece.
From the first I was intimidated by almost anything on the new boat. This boat was literally half the size of Evenstar, about 1/10th of weight, and was worth about the cost of of Evenstar’s batteries. It scared me half to death. The engine, an Atomic Four – a gas powered little beast – was marginally more complex than a lawnmower engine. In hindsight, I should have reveled in it’s simplicity. Even the 30 HP Volvo diesel on my last boat was less scary that what lurks in my engine room now.
In the space of a decade we’ve gotten several orders of magnitude more complex, powerful, and expensive in the boats we’ve chosen. Today, we are a far cry from the 1966 Tartan 27 that stymied
