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My Response to: "Why are you selling?"

publicmvclockwork

Updated: Apr 22, 2023


This seems to be the next most popular question after are there any issues, so, briefly..


I bought Clock Work after a really good motorcycle wreck in CA (police motorcycle instructor school) brought my 25+ year run of putting in mostly 100-hr weeks to a full stop that could not be restarted. Wanted to spend more time doing fun things with the family and make up for 2M miles running around mostly solving design/measurement problems. I thought a trawler was the best choice... I was pure sailor/racer before that. The idea of exploring the northeastern seaboard with the family seemed attractive, as was doing the mission planning/engineering to CW to bring a couple of well-prepped bikes up the Hudson and into the Great Lakes to take a dirt bike riding vacation in the U-P of Michigan with a friend. That's why *I* wanted the crane:) Screw that primitive camping stuff... CW is a perfect and comfortable home base.


Turns out the family didn't enjoy boating at all and that was sufficient to take out the plan as formulated. For a several years thereafter, the fun for me with the boat became doing a wide range of mechanical/electrical projects, maintenance method experiments, and designing/building various solutions with a life-long friend continuing the sort of serious skills collaboration we'd already done together for decades. That lasted until he quickly got sick with something obviously serious, whereupon I closed my company to be their full-time wingman on the "technical decision-making", which is the core of what I do/study the past 25 years or so. From the point he got sick, there was an increasing need for what I do during my consulting (harm avoidance via detection of faulty/lazy decision-making), and my interest in boating/marina "life" went to zero. After he passed, I continued going down there to close out projects and maintenance experiments we started, and try to get interested (no joy)... I finished the quick-deploy sea-anchor (tool to greatly reduce/control wind-driven horizontal slip after an engine-out to buy more time for a tow to arrive) from a military cargo drogue chute. This project was one of our favorites (he was a pilot), and some others like a correct fuel polisher (there's a subtle feature those absolutely need to be effective that I've never once seen in a DIY job). My time allocation was 90% work on/tinker... 10% short runs around the bay using it as my office for a few days and then head home for a while. Often never left the dock. My accumulation of engine hours essentially came to a dead stop, which fortunately has turned out to be a selling point. Thank covid for another nice chunk of that too. Also just too much driving... it takes much of the fun out of tinkering to be so far from your tools and machine shop.. and the commute time for some reason began to climb severely too.


The straw that sank the camel was me bending over the steel step next to the transmission that you use to climb out of the engine room.. reaching down into the bilge for a suspected intermittent pump switch I believe (specifically, trying to remove the ridiculously-tough hose off the pump). After several hours of exerting in that position, I brilliantly perf'd my old man stomach lining and ended up with an abdominal bleed and in an ambulance on my way to 3 wasted days in a hospital. I promised myself in the ambulance that the next time I "get hurt having fun" it will be crashing a dirt bike out in the woods, on Earth Day, as God intended:)

I liked and still like the BOAT.. a lot.  I spent a year and a half tracking down just the right one and many seasons taking care of it to my best. But the universe beat me. I hate the constantly lengthening ride/traffic. I hate that 100% of the time THE tool you need is in one of the tool chests in the shop or garage back home. I hate having to go home so frequently to modify a tool or make a part. I would hope to add politely that I am "incompatible" with the majority of marine service providers I meet and am of the supportable opinion I do better, faster work than all of them put together. But predominantly, life's too short to live it choosing between family and a machine/activity. Of course, if that machine were, say, a Husky ~74 360 Sportsman, well... I'd hate how that might make me look on the more civilized docks.

The silver lining for the next owner is a greatly reduced engine-hours burn-rate the last years.


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