Wishes and Pipe Dreams

The "photo-painting" above is deceptive in the story you think it tells.  Maybe this boat rarely gets a chance to raise its' sails?
 
One thing I have learned as I moved to this area near the water is that you can read the owners by their boats.  There are new fancy boats both fast and slow, well-used work boats, small pleasure craft and old, old boats.  Boats are usually (not always) like the Velveteen Rabbit.  They can be old and worn, but if well care for, they most certainly are used on a regular basis and used with respect.  If the boats are shiny and very new looking they are either NEW NEW or something that someone with more money than brains bought when his bonus came in.  But they sit idle representing a pipe dream that is slowly dying as the owners find they really do not like the regular outing on the water.  If the boat is worn and beaten down, maybe the owner cares less about life and just wants to make it through the day or has abandoned the effort to use the boat altogether.

I think the boats above are used on the old-fashioned and very wasteful passive fixed gill nets that the owner is supposed to check on a regular basis for trapped turtles, sting rays and other animals as well as make sure that they remove gilled fish before they die.  Fortunately these gill nets are grandfathered in and no new ones are being staked on the water.  They are also a boating hazard in the evenings when fishermen are supposed to put a solar or battery operated night light and do not!

Usually getting a boat ready for any outing and maintaining a boat while it sits idle at anchor or at the dock is for people who love the job or people who rely on the boat for food or people who have lots of money to hire help while they are raking in more money at the office.

But for many who depend on the wild harvest for income it is becoming a rare industry that provides little income as the prices of boat maintenance, fuel, and loss of animals in the ocean available for harvest bring profits down.  As few may know, most of our seafood comes from cultured places outside the U.S., some sustainable and some not.  It is even hard to get blue crab on the East Coast in the summer that does not come from Asia and you have to ask at the restaurants where the seafood comes from.  We always do that just to keep the restaurant owners on their toes.