One boat, one guy, one hour or so. Only slightly fictionalized to paint a more complete verbal picture of the inner truth of the situation.

I think the universe sent me this boat and this guy to see if I was serious about finding a sailboat to liveaboard. If there was a law against sailboat abuse ....

The amazing thing was that the rigging was really very good. Stainless steel is pretty tough stuff.

His attitude empowered me to look at every single piece of gear, open every ccompartment, every surface, look at both sides of every sail, ask every question, have him drag out everything from the garage for me to look at, etc. I kept saying," Well, I know it is a little trouble but I need to check it out now so I can justify my purchase decision."

I'm glad my buddy Richard was along. He has a lot of experience with boats. I think he was worried I was seriously interested in the boat, until I quietly told him, "This has just turned into an educational experience, what else can we get this guy to say?" It became a game of finding everything screwy on the boat and getting the expert explanation about why I shouldn't worry about it.

My visual is the boat slowly sinking under full sail with our hero looking at circling fins and cursing the inferior "manufacture" of the S/V Tormented over the VHF to the Coast Guard - who keep telling him his signal is breaking up too much for them to vector in. Over and over again - as the Devil laughs.