Saturday, May 15, 2021

The round peg into the little round hole

Video just released shows the destruction and demolition of Toy Boat and the old J/29. Do you remember them? They were smashed to pieces in 2015. How about Maria and Soma? If you remember those boats, you have truly been around Hoofers for a long time.

Keelboats come and go here. Now we've got two Tartan-10's and a new 36 footer for the kiddies to fight over. Sometimes we have better boats, sometimes we have junkers like the T-10's. In any case, they all last for a few years until Hoofers damages them to the point where no one wants to fix them anymore, then they're trashed for the insurance money.

Here is an example of Hoofers abusing various keelboats. How some of them died:

• Toy Boat's mast broke because no one ever checked the cowling where the mast went through the deck, which had worn out, causing the mast to weaken and break.
• The J/29 simply got beat up until it wasn't worth repairing anymore. The final straw may have been when Chris F. ran it aground.
• Decoy, Hoofers' biggest boat ever, was run aground so hard that it almost tore the keel off. It had to be lifted out the next day--forever.
• Estrella (or was it Off-Call?) tore loose from its mooring and blew onto the concrete steps at the Union. Did club leaders tow it back out..? Nope--they let it bounce on the concrete all night so they could reap the insurance money.
• Maria was rammed by a drunken motorboater--not Hoofers' fault (amazingly). It had to be lifted out, but was repaired and found a third life years later in Montana!
• Soma--what ever became of Hoofer's most iconic boat? No one knows. (A certain ex-Hoofer is rumored to have Soma hidden in his backyard, camouflaged as a cow, still dreaming of repairing her one day.)

Amazingly, Hoofer keelboat instructors are [in]competent to sink boats anywhere--not just on Lake Mendota.

Remember when you were a kid and you were being selfish with your toys, and your mom said, "You share that with Stevie or I'll take it away!"? Of course you do. It's why you're in Hoofer Sailing Club now--you want to control the big toys.

There is a strong incentive for certain people to get rid of keelboats as fast as possible. When they get rid of one, you lose your ratings (or they become useless), and they regain control. It helps that there are plenty of filthy rich people out there willing to donate their beloved old boats to die in in Hoofers.

The moral of the story: If you feel like there are little bugs crawling all over your body, there probably are. (I get that feeling sometimes when I put on a hoofer life jacket.)

If the Facebook video link goes away, we'll post the videos to youtube. Thanks to the uploader.