The world is full of weirdos

This classified ad practically hollered at me from the pages of Latitude 38: “Pre-estate sale by owner. Boatbuilding tools, materials, fastenings, fittings, plans, books, magazines...I’m lazy and wish for geezer home.” I called the Novato phone number and talked to Bill, a cheerful man of about 110 who said he had plenty of clamps, sawhorses, and even a sheet of plywood that I could have.

Bubbling with excitement, I raced down to Black Point anticipating the treasures I would find at garage sale prices. Bill indeed had treasures, but garage sale prices were not part of the bargain. Mostly he wanted to deliver long-winded stories about every clamp, bevel gauge, and chisel in his workshop and then decided he didn’t really want to part with them. He had hundreds of C-clamps, but could let me have only three of them, at $15 apiece. Fifteen dollars each? Are you crazy? I had been thinking more along the lines of $15 for 15 clamps.

Was I interested in any books? In fact, I had been keeping an eye out for Howard Chapelle’s American Small Sailing Craft, a boatbuilding classic that is still in print. There was a copy of it on Bill’s bookshelf. “Would you sell me this one?” I asked. Long pause. “Don’t know if I can give that one up,” Bill said. I scanned the shelf again. “You have two copies of it,” I pointed out to him. Of course, he wanted $15 for that, too, even though he clearly had paid half that at a used book store.

As for the coveted mahogany plywood, he could only let it go for full market value, because after talking to me about the Nutshell Pram, he thought he might want to build a dinghy, too. Sure, Bill. And I’m going to build the Queen Mary.

Disheartened and disillusioned, I came home empty-handed. Cary tried to console me by pointing out that the boatbuilding world is full of antisocial weirdos. It’s not just the boatbuilding world, though. The whole world is full of antisocial weirdos, and they are all either running or responding to classified ads.