I have a really hard time trusting meteorologists.

No offence is intended to any weather forecasters who are reading this. The trouble is, Kingston is a geographically and meteorologically complex region, making it hard to build accurate forecast models with sufficiently fine detail- and the forecasters who do cover our area are also responsible for many, many other cities. So, while a forecast of "sunny, not much happening" is pretty reliable, estimates of wind, rain and sea state are often way off.

We've had a heat and drought wave in southern Ontario for the last few weeks. The grass goes "crunch" underfoot, there's been virtually no rain for a month, and the thermometer's been consistently in the high 20s to low 30s- and, with humidity at 70+ percent, it feels a lot hotter.

It's obviously quite tempting to crank up the air conditioner and pretend that it's nice and cool. The energy (and financial) cost of running that air conditioner, though, escalates much faster than you might expect.

Let's face it: Boats are EXPENSIVE.

Assuming you want to own a yacht of an appropriate size for long-term cruising- say 12 metres (40 feet) LOA- you currently have four options:

• Buy a new, ready-to-go cruising yacht, often with a price tag north of \$350,000.
• Buy a new day-sailing boat and upgrade it to offshore cruising standards. The basic boat may be under \$200,000, but the design will often be inappropriate for offshore work and may require substantial hardware and systems upgrades.