09 Mar Learning the Lingo

Quite a number of years ago, we set out to buy a sailboat.  The decision to do so came about after an adventurous trip around the eastern side of the Great Lakes in Ontario Canada.

Both my hubby and I had spent five weeks teaching summer school and our reward was to rent a cottage for a week on the shores of Lake Huron followed by this road trip.  We were exhausted when we arrived at the cottage and the location was spectacular with its world famous sunsets.  For all that week it was easy to think about making a cottage part of our summer experience.

Then we hit the road and traveled across the norther shore of Georgian Bay and Lake Superior. Atop every hill was a breathtaking scene and it became apparent that with a cottage one would miss all this and be land locked to one place.  A motor home became the obvious choice until we hit the marina at Thunder Bay.

It was there that the decision to buy a sailboat was formed.  However, neither my husband nor I knew how to sail, had never sailed nor been passengers aboard someone else’s boat.  But we remained unrelenting in our decision. We were teachers and we could learn. And learn we did.

Did you know that for most things there is a specific language.  We needed to learn it; the vocabulary, the phrases and the expressions.  Ever try to buy something that you have no idea about?  How on earth do you ensure that you will be a) taken seriously and b) not taken advantage of?  We learned that we needed to have a survey taken of the boat which is the same in principle as a home inspection when buying a home.  That would help take care of b).

Today more than ever before people aren’t so much relying on sales people to tell or teach them the particulars of an item they are interested in purchasing.  With the internet, they do most of that due diligence and research on their own so they are informed when entering a purchasing stage.  The decision-making is mostly done before they even speak to a sales person.

We did a lot of searching on the internet and my hubby did a lot of reading over the following winter.  When summer came around it was time to start looking. Marinas are full of boats with ‘For Sale’ signs on them so we visited many.  On a very hot summer’s day we found ourselves standing on a dock watching a couple rig (add all the attachments) their boat.  I guess we were drooling because when they’d finished they asked us out on their maiden voyage of the season.  There was no doubt about it; we wanted a sailboat.

That summer we met many sailors, talked to buyers and sellers alike and learned the lingo. Our communication skills improved with every encounter.  By the time we found THE boat for us, we could ask intelligent questions and understand the answers.  We were of like minded when it came time to purchase.

We did sound like we knew what we were talking about at least during the sales process. However, when it was just hubby and me out there putting our theory to the test, it was quite a bit different.

If you’d been aboard you’d have heard him say this to me…”Grab that thing….No….not that thing, the other thing!”