To Gadget or Not To Gadget?

…that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
Without the latest electronic 
or electro-mechanical doo-dad at my ready  hand…

Apologies to the Bard…

In the past few weeks we’ve gone to a couple of Boat Shows.  Of course as a boat owner I love them, the latest and greatest of tools and technology and a wonderful chance to see some new and different solutions to a lot of vexing problems.

Mid September we went to the Newport International Boat Show.  We went by boat and anchored in Newport.  We had a wonderful time and saw some neat stuff.  My son the aspiring yacht designer managed to get on and have a look almost every sail boat in the show and my daughter collected the usual small bag of candies and plastic floating giveaways.

Last weekend, with out fall cruising declared “Over” to get an early start on boat and house projects we decided a boat related weekend was still in order.  So it was off to Annapolis for the U.S. Sailboat Show over Columbus Day weekend.

There were a lot of really, really cool things at both shows.  We spent money on things we’d been planning to get (mattress for the master cabin, a pressure cooker, SSB ground plane) but we almost slid into a wild orgy of spending on a lot of really neat looking gadgets.

The thing is, I could make a really excellent case for why we might NEED one of these things.  I’m really good at that.  But at some point common sense has to prevail and what you need versus what you should have versus what would be nice to have.  In other words if someone gave us one of these for a gift we’d be thrilled and keep it, but we don’t think we should shell out the money on it as a “need” when there is so much else.

So things like a cordless electric winch handle.  Our winches are BIG, and three of them are powered.  More importantly our hydraulic roller furling has a winch-handle shaped emergency furling control.  But on the bow it’s blocked by the pulpit so you can only use the tiny little emergency handle to furl it up.  I’ve done this.  Do you know how long it takes to furl an 800+ square foot sail in with a six inch emergency handle in pitching seas?  If this thing fit in there, it’d be ZOOM the sail is in.  Of course…it has to be charged and ready.  So we either need to continually charge it or it won’t be available for an emergency furling failure.  And our power winches can take a real handle and be operated manually – you can do it the old fashion way even though it’s work.  Ultimately we figured this is something that would never come out of the box for us, and if it did we probably would have forgotten to charge it.

Or image stabilized binoculars.  I can read the fine print on a shoe box 200 feet across the show tent while hopping on one foot.  Spotting a name on a fishing boat you are trying to hail can be a challenge and these would make it much easier.  But again, how often we we need this instead of our regular binoculars, and at what cost?  The quality environment proof ones are quite expensive.

Maybe a diving hookah – we may still come back to this.  This is an electrically powered air compressor with dive regulator’s attached that lets you work under the boat as long as you have battery power.  Or you could get the integrated floating model to add unlimited diving in water up to 30′.  But the real use would be cleaning the bottom, unfouling the prop, replacing zincs and other underwater jobs.  All of which you can do with a snorkel, it just takes a lot longer.  But it’s an excellent workout.

LED Cabin light fixtures and waterproof gear bags?  Clothing and safety Gear? Cockpit cushions and cooking gear?  Bifocal polarized sunglasses – OK, I should have bought those.  You name it and I was there salivating like a man just let out of a year on bread in water at an all you can eat buffet.

These are all great products by the way.  Good quality and well thought out for the most part.  We would enjoy owning and using them.  We just couldn’t cross the bridge from “Want” to “Need”.

Fortunately reason has mostly prevailed and we only bought what we intended to (although the price and quality may have been a bit more than expected).  We are running down research on a few things though we’ve not really expanded the list.  Much.

By the way I have an excellent list of going away presents, just in case anyone needs it.