Forced Choices, Part 3

This is Part 3 of a multi-part post.

This post is an attempt to explain how people can be forced to make financial decisions that are not beneficial, why Social Security is necessary, and why the system of medical insurance and private doctors in the United States needs to change.


There are SO many things wrong with what goes on in the U.S. Congress; it is hard to know what to talk about first.  I share the feelings of many Americans that the members of Congress are completely out of touch with the people they are supposed to represent. It seems that the majority of members either don't know, or don't care about the hardships most working and retired Americans face every day.  The policies they advocate are just plain bad for the average American, and only benefit the very rich and the biggest, richest corporations.

One day, soon after I could withdraw my 401k money without a penalty, I saw an ad on the Internet for what looked like the perfect sailboat for my retirement home. On spring break I drove to Florida with my kids, Adam and Danielle. We took a half-day test sail on the boat. Everything on the boat seemed to work perfectly, and the kids and I had the most enjoyable day together that any of us could remember.

1973 Gulfstar 41, Much Ado

Newly painted hull with anti-fouling bottom paint

Clean and neat as a pin inside

Newly overhauled engine, with batteries and water heater on their shelf in the background

My first smile since January, 2007

Adam unfurling the jib

Danielle being Danielle

I bought the boat for about $45,000. Since I had inspected everything carefully, and since everything seemed to work correctly, I didn’t see a need to have a Licensed Marine Surveyor inspect the boat.  This was a fatal omission, because without a Surveyor’s report, I had no way to establish the condition of the boat at the time I signed the contract with a marina to store the boat.  I was planning to moor the boat in Charleston, which is north of most hurricane activity. In Florida, purchased before the start of hurricane season, the boat was effectively uninsurable. Moored in Charleston, I would be able to get insurance that didn’t cost as much as my mortgage payment.

The plan was to leave the Florida Gulf Coast as soon after the end of the school year as possible and with the kids and a couple of their friends as crew, sail around Florida and ride the Gulf Stream north to Charleston.  I used the balance of my 401k money to buy about $5,000 worth of charts, electronics, life jackets, a satellite rescue beacon, and a lot of other equipment for the boat.

During this time I was being treated for Prostate Cancer, and the kids needed to take Driver’s Education, so we didn’t make the mid June departure date.  Then, my doctor decided my prostate was small enough to treat, so the trip had to be postponed until the next year.

Recovery from the procedure was complicated by a medical equipment failure that sent me to the ER in the middle of the night.  The ER Urologist felt he had to lecture me on the folly of choosing a non-FDA approved treatment for 45 minutes before he would treat me.  He refused to replace the piece of equipment that had failed, and insisted on inserting a Foley Catheter instead.  This slowed my recovery and dramatically compromised my ability to teach for about three months.  Because recovering bladder control, after the Foley was removed, took so long, I had to bring two complete changes of clothes to work every day. If I had not had a rest room in my classroom, I would not have been able to work for the first three months of the school year.  I started to feel OLD and SICK.  I was tired all the time, and this made it more difficult for me to cope when I got difficult students.  Feeling OLD, SICK, and TIRED all the time also pushed me toward choosing early retirement.

I had a painful development in my personal life, after my diagnosis in 2007, and I was filling the role of single parent for two teens, and had no spouse or partner to give me emotional support.  When I went to Nassau for my treatment, all the other patients had their wives there to help them. I was the only patient who was alone.  The emotional toll of the loneliness and sole responsibility for the kids made me emotionally fragile, and I had to go back into therapy in order to deal with the resulting depression.

My health insurance paid for some of the therapy, but there was a considerable out of pocket expense that further undermined my precarious financial situation.  I still had to drive 3 hours to see my doctor for follow-up care after my procedure. My Daughter, Danielle, drove me or rode with me to most of these appointments.  Some of the time, it was almost like she was the parent, having to take care of me.  It was difficult for her to deal with at such a young age, and she had trouble talking to me and expressing her emotions anyway, so I’m sure it was very difficult for her.

When it finally looked like I was going to be able to take the boat to Charleston in the summer of 2010, I hired a Licensed Marine Surveyor to give me recommendations on what should be done to make the boat seaworthy and capable of sailing from the Gulf Coast of Florida to Charleston.  His findings were that the boat had been damaged by a tropical storm in August of 2008, and was a total loss.  The marina owner failed to properly secure the boat when I had it pulled out of the water, as the storm approached, as was recommended by the marine insurance industry.  The boat was blown on its side, there were stress cracks in the fiberglass hull, all six batteries were dumped on top of the engine, spilling acid everywhere, a drain hose broke and dumped thousands of gallons of rain water on the engine and electrical system, and the list of damage went on and on, for seven pages.  Given enough time and money, those things could have been repaired or replaced.  However, the marina owner was content to collect his $200 a month storage fee, and never told me there was a problem or lifted a finger to help, so the entire interior was covered with mildew and black mold.  My clean, neat little ship was a wreck. I had to pay a salvage company $1,500 to scrap the boat so I would not be fined by the Florida and Federal EPAs.  It turned out that our wonderful afternoon sail in April of 2008 cost $50,000.  I would have been better off paying $5,000 to charter a NEW boat for a week during that Spring Break.

Just one example of stress cracks in the hull

Mildew everywhere

All my stuff thrown everywhere and more mildew everywhere

Engine with batteries and water heater dumped on top. Not visible is the toxic soup of diesel engine oil, battery acid, and rain water underneath, and filling the bilge from stem to stern.

Because I had not had the boat surveyed before I bought it, I had no way to prove the marina owner was lying about the condition of the boat, when I purchased it, so it was inadvisable to take any legal action, since the odds of success were too low.

At this point, I was a complete emotional mess.  Twenty years of savings were gone, all the gear I bought was useless without the boat and there was no market for the stuff, 400 miles inland, where I was living.  My dream of rocking at anchor off the beach of some tropical island and sailing to foreign ports, which I’d had since age four, was smashed beyond repair.  With no insurance the boat would cost more than I paid for it to repair, and I knew that even if I was recalled from my "lay-off" I would not have enough working years to be able to save enough money to replace the boat.

To be continued …