I've not feared for my safety and health. ... Enjoy your single-engined airplane adventures over wilderness!
Well, I don't see much point in being safe if it means being incredibly bored, but that's just me.
To drag this kicking and screaming back to the orignal topic, it's obvious there is a big place for semi-planing and planing boats. A lotta, lotta people have time constraints but still want to be able to cruise to areas they are really interested in. Or really like being. For these folks, the "fast cruiser" is the answer. And this is obviously a huge segment of the boating population because most cruisers fall into this category, from Grand Banks at the lower end of the range to Eastbays and Sabres at the upper end.
And I susepct, that as the GenX and Millennials get into boating, this desire for speed will be even more prevelant. These are people who are used to things happening right now, like ordering their new iPhone on their old iPhone. We have a number of folks from these two groups in our department now, and I don't see any of them strolling off in the sunset or going somewhere they want to go at 8 knots, let alone 6. They want things to happen NOW. And based on reflecting on my own character, how one is at 25 is likely to be how one is at 85.
A girl (sorry, woman) I worked with in television in Hawaii gave me a great line awhile back in an e-mail when we were discussing somebody we'd both worked with and I wondered if this person had changed much since I'd worked with him. She wrote, "Oh Marin, you know people never change. They just get more of the same."
It's become one of my favorite sayings (along with "crickets") and I think she's absolutely right on the money. So the Millenials will be zooming and booming around in their planing boats into old age, I suspect, assuming they get interested in boating at all.
There is a type of boater, or person if you like, who likes to go new places and take their time and go slow and really observe what's around him or her, but likes to go really fast in between those places. I am one of these people, which is why a slow boat like our GB simply doesn't cut it. If we had the same boat with a couple of 300+ hp engines in it, it might work as we could then take advanatage of the GB hull's ability to go pretty fast. But even then, I'm not sure it would be fast enough.
To me (and my wife) the right speed to be going somewhere we want to get to in a boat is about 30 knots. But.... once we're there, 8 knots is just fine. Even slower sometimes. Even stopped on occasion. Then when we're ready to move on, 30 knots again.
It's why I have no interst in creeping across an ocean in a boat (or ship, which I've done once). I grew up on an ocean, I know what they're like, and I think they're boring out in the middle unless they're mad at you in which case they're scary. Boring and scary are not choices I'm interested in, hence my belief that the only smart way to cross an ocean is in a airplane with a seven at the front and back.
So to me, the perfect cruising boat is one that will comfortably do 30 knots all day without over-taxing the enlnes, but can also bumble along at 6 or 8 knots when we're someplace really coo that we want to spend time exploring. And do this bumbling along without mucking up the engines.
I think that's the kind of boat that the Millenials will be interested in, too.
PS-- And yes, Mark, we definitely do enjoy flying into the back country and camping and fishing and wathing the animals watch us. At 110 mph. (Actually, we wish the damn plane went faster. Time for a turbine, perhaps......?).
