Subject: Re: Trumpedo: "guns-a-blazing," baby


Dude, most of those were pleasure boats or for recreational fishing, Yeah there were a few trawlers among the pictures. But most were small single engine, what we call bay boats, not suitable for off shore. I looked through five pages of pictures and did not see one with three engines like your standard Venezuelan "fisherman". Do you realize just one 300+Hp outboard costs $40-50K. I doubt the poor Venezuelan fisherman struggling to feed his family spends $150K on engines before he even buys the boat.

I realize you say that, but those are the good looking ones. And it appears you would absolutely not believe what people will put to sea in. They will go out to sea in dayboats, but mostly old style boats plus. They might even have a mast for a sail, but rarely use it, though the culture may have been seafaring. The long off shore fishers use both sails and engines to get over where the money fish are. They are in no sense speed boats - they chug along assisted by sails. 25% of them have TB.

The big pangas that really move are specialists. Takes money to run that.