It seems that my cousin, Jimothy (yes, that’s really his name – don’t ask), has gone and built himself a boat. This is going by the reports of my mother, who just got off the blower with his mother. You might be wondering why this is sufficiently noteworthy to be blogging about, and the answer is that Jim has always been notoriously averse to anything even vaguely construction-related.
What’s more, the boat in question is said to be a motor boat. It’s possible that all this means is that he’s built a box with an outboard motor stuck on one side – I’m not sure that anything more than that is technically required for something to qualify as a motor boat. Thinking about it, though, I guess there’d have to be some principles of flotation at least vaguely woven into the design.
According to his mother, Jim got the parts cheaply from a friend of a friend who does outboard boat motor servicing and repairs in Melbourne. Another friend here in Geelong showed him how to piece the bits together to form a seaworthy vessel (well, that might be pushing it a bit – the seaworthiness factor remains to be tested).
I’m just confound by how a guy who I was sure didn’t know a screwdriver from his elbow has managed to install an anchor winch system. Melbourne boating enthusiasts, what do you make of this? Did you wake up one morning to find yourself a powerful yearning to ride upon the sea? Or did you gradually piece together bits of information about waterborne vehicle parts until you’d gathered a general understanding of how boats work?
I’m going to call Jim right now and ask him what the deal is. Just a couple of months ago he came over to ask me to show him a what a screwdriver is, to confirm that he had the right tool to put together his new shelving unit. A person can’t bridge a knowledge gap like that in two months, nor build a functioning boat, for that matter.