MINNEY'S FREE TABLE !!!

Five to ten times a day you guys roll in with a car or pick-up truck full of boat gear. We know you want to go home empty. About 95% of the time we cut a deal and you drive away with a check and we have your pile of gear to deal with. In almost every load, "there's some gold and some garbage." The gold we attempt to put fair selling prices on and sell, the garbage ( items that are badly damaged, too old to be of any use to anyone, small items that the pricing and selling of them cost more than their value), we put on the FREE TABLE. In the past week an Achilles rubber boat, 15 boxes of electrical fittings, new galvanized pipe fittings, bunk boards, a complete auto pilot, several radar antennas, 5 damaged sails and 100's of other items were placed on the FREE TABLE. What's pretty amazing is that during business hours, this stuff disappears sometimes in minutes. Lots of time I go on a cleaning frenzy and put some perfectly good items on the FREE TABLE that I just get tired of looking at. Alcohol stoves, electronics etc. What's really cool is that local boaters are using our free table to dispose of some of their unwanted items. Several times a week we will arrive at the store and find items on the table that appeared over night? Don't tell anyone, but some of the stuff is so good that we slip it into the store and sell it.... FREE BOAT GEAR! Is that a good way to 'KEEP BOATING AFFORDABLE, OR WHAT?" P.S. Would the guy that took the table please bring it back?

LOVE WHAT YOU DO....... "Steve Jobs"

After a delightful week hanging on a mooring in Avalon, I'm back on the "firing line" of my little store. October is always a great month for us. Instead of getting the back to school slump and decline in business, we get the annual parade of cruisers waiting out the hurricane season as they head south to Mexico and beyond. Yesterday was a totally fun and interesting day. One lively couple from Marina del Rey was doing their final outfitting of "Ima Loa", Doc Sterns 40' catamaran which they purchased and have completely re-conditioned. Soon they will be anchored in an idyllic cove in Baja sipping rum punches. Another customer had a bit of a sad tale. He rolled in with a pick-up truck full of "pure gold". I noted that the stainless port lights appeared new but had signs of bedding compound on the flanges. He stated that he had to dismantle his dream boat and scrap the hull. He didn't really want to talk about it, but I knew I was dealing with a wounded mariner. The $1500.00 check I gave him cheered him up a bit. More than the money, he appeared somewhat happy that his hardware and electronics would end up on other adventurer's boats and help them to full fill their dreams. During all of this I was trying to measure spinnakers in a brisk afternoon westerly. As I left for lunch I loaded my truck with the crews of 3 "Baja Ha-Ha" boats and delivered them back to "Viking's Port", our little staging area on Mariner's mile where cruisers can tie up their rubber boats and hoof it up to the store. After lunch, a family from Vancouver dropped in looking for a big mainsail. Sixty feet by twenty two. They are sailing aboard their 60' cutter to Panama and then on the Belieze where they are going to establish a boat yard. We pulled 3 sails from our computer list that didn't fill the bill. Then we dove in to the huge stack I was working on. The cruising family was totally into the program. With pop on one end of the measuring tape and his good looking son on the other, I read the measuring tape and wrote out the specs. We looked at some great sails, but they were all a bit on the small size. If any of you have a 60' luff by 22' foot- ten or twelve oz. dacron main you would like to sell, give the store a ring. The sails I was showing this family were all priced at $1000.00 or less. The rains are gone, I've got 500 sails to measure. Anyone want to help??? Pictured is the NEW EDITION of chart guide from San Diego to Panama. This is a great buy. $500.00 worth of charts for $99.00. Also are the USCG Navigation Rules. All boats of any size are required to have this book aboard. If you get boarded and do not have this book aboard, YOU WILL BE CITED BY THE U.S. COAST GUARD.....

Marine Electronics

Lately we've ben getting in lots of marine electronics in pretty damn good shape. Of course whenever people bring them in they tell us that they worked perfectly when they came off of the boat... but whether they're spinning yarns or not we blow this stuff out cheap. VHF's, GPS, EPIRB's, Fishfinders, Radars, etc... The items change daily but give us a call or better yet come on in.

- Josh