Just returned from the Annapolis Sailboat Show. Here’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good: A fantastic weekend. I’m preparing my Tanton 43 for a serious ocean voyage, and the best part was having real experts at the booths who could answer tough technical questions. The people, yachts, and setting were excellent. The rest was depressing. I’ve attended this show since the ’90s, and it keeps shrinking. It’s still substantial, with specialists in almost every field, but the depth of competition is disappearing. Only three diesel manufacturers had dedicated booths. Major names like Volvo Penta and Westerbeke were absent. My favorite, Beta Marine, displayed four engines, but hardly its full lineup. Mercury and Suzuki were missing, too, although new electric outboard brands showed up. The clientele looked far wealthier than 30 years ago. The middle class has either left sailing or can no longer afford major upgrades to aging boats. The ugly: Sailboat sales are tanking. Of the 40,000+ new boats sold in the wealthiest country on Earth last year, fewer than 400 were sailboats. Used prices are collapsing, too. Weeks ago I shared one of my five dream yachts, now listed for $89,000. A few years back it would have commanded hundreds of thousands. I’ve seen gorgeous, well-maintained bluewater yachts from the ’70s through ’90s for $20,000–$30,000, and newer yachts from the 2000s and 2010s for $60,000–$80,000 if you know where to look. Why? Insurance restrictions, marinas filled by the COVID buying boom, rising costs, and fewer people with time to learn to sail. Those with spare time increasingly prefer turning a key on a powerboat and going. Catamarans are propping up the market, but insurance and dockage for that beam are outrageous. With two big engines and tiny sails, many feel more like powerboats with masts. But the deeper problem is design. Everything looks dated. We are LONG overdue for a revolution. 1960s: Fiberglass transforms boatbuilding. 1970s: Robert Perry and others develop capable new offshore hulls. 1980s: Taiwanese yards deliver gorgeous teak interiors and craftsmanship. 1990s: Racing innovations make cruising boats faster. 2000s: Wide sterns create generous deck space. 2010s: Lighter interiors and large windows make boats faster, brighter, roomier. Since then? Precious little. I remember visiting Disney in the ’90s in our Ford Taurus. Its rounded windows and digital dashboard felt futuristic, but Tomorrowland looked decades old. My dad called it “the future from the ’70s.” That’s exactly how this boat show felt. Even multimillion-dollar Swans and Oysters had rounded edges, ugly oversized windows, and millennial-gray interiors. Giant screens and TVs everywhere, as if we go sailing for MORE screen time. Those windows were exciting 15 years ago. Now LEDs can brighten a cabin without turning it into a glass box. Who wants to spend a million dollars on a floating Hilton Home2 Suites? I boarded a $2.5 million yacht with flimsy plastic hatches that looked ready to blow out in the first 20-foot wave. When I challenged the salesman, he lectured me about eco-friendly materials and saving diesel through weight reduction. 🙄 Give us fast, computer-designed hulls, not cost-cutting eco-trash dressed up in six shades of gray. The cure is simple: Use modern engineering to build boats that are rugged, fast, and classically beautiful. We don’t want plastic. We want brass. Figure out how to 3D-print it. We don’t want an iPad holder. Give us a proper place for a sextant. We don’t want a 60-inch TV. Give us a better dodger, built with advanced clear materials, so we can sit outside, protected, and enjoy the actual ocean. Stop designing floating hotel rooms. Start building yachts that make people dream of going to sea. Harden the lines, engineer quality, lower the cost of luxury, use natural instead of eco materials. Make a model nornies can afford. Call me. I’ll design the next gen yacht!

My aunt found a box of letters my dad sent home from Vietnam. Every night before bed, he wrote his mother a long letter. He was a medic who flew some pretty hairy missions, so I expected mud-stained pages, crumpled paper, and barely legible handwriting. Nope. Every letter is pristine, written in meticulous penmanship. Then I remembered: Dad wasn’t a Navy corpsman embedded with the Marines. He was AIR FORCE. 💀 I have absolutely no doubt that while bullets were whizzing by in a hot LZ, Dad was yelling at wounded guys to hurry the F up and load the bird so he could get back to his air-conditioned bunk in time for dinner.

“As Sherman put it: It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”

Alright, gentlemen, here’s how to answer the question, “Who’s your celebrity crush?” The trick is to pick a woman you’re not remotely attracted to. Preferably someone older. Then go ALL IN. Talk about how she’s the most beautiful woman alive. How you’d leave everything behind for her. How you’ve been hopelessly in love since the moment you first laid eyes on her. Defend her beauty with the conviction of a medieval knight defending his queen. The more ridiculous the mismatch, the funnier it gets. Mine is Sandra Bullock. Occasionally, when I want to keep things spicy, I switch to Cher. Keeps the wife guessing. PRO TIP: Once a year, wait until your wife is coming home from a long day at work. Get comfortable on the couch, preferably under a blanket, and put on the absolute worst Sandra Bullock movie you can find. When she walks in, don’t even look up. Just sigh wistfully and say, “God, she’s magnificent.” There are few things more alarming to a hardworking wife than finding her husband lounging on the couch watching a terrible romantic comedy. Bonus points if you whisper, “We could’ve been happy together, Sandy.” P.S. After twenty years of this joke I have gaslighted myself into actually having a small crush on Sandra.

There’s always an Alex photo.

Pork belly and butter. Yum.

Everyone agrees that difficult hard times make you stronger. Most agree that the most difficult times in our lives were the happiest. Why doesn’t anyone see that marriage is hard for a reason? Because it makes you stronger and happier.

“A woman wondering if they can do better than her current husband, the answer is always yes." This might be the most evil thing I’m seen all month. Your wife cannot find someone better than you. You cannot find someone better than your wife. Can you find someone smarter, better looking, smarter or richer? To have sex with? Probably. To build a life with? Maybe. Big if. But the entire point of marriage is a loving stable platform ordered toward your mutual good and that of your children. Marriage is not about happiness. It’s for providing the platform to which you can become happy and much much more. And this is a very dangerous time in world history to get divorced. Divorce seems like a safe option because we just had the greatest period of wealth, peace and stability the world has ever seen. But the world without peace, wealth and stability is a very dangerous and hostile place. For both men and women. I therefore find it ironic that the people on the left who keep crying the sky is falling are the very ones promoting divorce. If the sky truly is falling then you need to stabilize the foundation of your life and repair that leaking roof NOW. Not abandon it. If the sky isn’t falling then the best you can do is reset the clock and start rebuilding that foundation and house with someone else. What they won’t tell you is that’s a lot of work. You have to be a idiot to want to start from scratch in middle age. I don’t want to do that. Building is hard. I want to enjoy the fruits of my labor and wealth and knowledge from the shelter of a loving marriage that sure as hell ain’t perfect but has depth and richness and great big load bearing beams we carved out of oak and hauled into place with great sweat, work and tears. Life is too short to abandon all you built and start over with someone who is needy too.