official missionary transportation

Do you guys like this boat?

tayana10sm.jpg

(you can’t really tell, but I crossed out the name of the boat, and wrote “church of the fsm”)
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(note – in picture 2, there used to be a lady standing on the deck, but I photoshopped her out. You can still sort of see her legs if you look closely)
tayana12sm.jpg

It’s not a pirate boat. But here’s the thing: it’s also not $2 million. This one’s a Tayana 37. The one pictured isn’t for sale, but they run about $100k, which we could probably handle *right now*.

The official FSM church missionary pirate boat IS going to happen, it’s just a matter of to what degree you want. I want to get everyone’s opinion on this. Wait until we can afford a “real” pirate ship, or get something smaller and start now? The Church makes nowhere near the amount of cash to get a millions-of-dollars boat anytime soon, if ever. The funds now are all coming from the t-shirts, car emblems, and book sales, and they’ve about leveled off. However, we do have a licensing arrangement, and there are some tv interests. That could mean some more cash for the pirate-boat-fund.

And there’s the option of fund-raising, but I’m guessing that people would be apprehensive paying into a fund like this (I would be). And are there that many seriously interested people who would pay $1k or more for a share of a pirate boat? I sort of wonder.

Maybe we could purchase a working boat, like a Baltic Trader (it’s sort of piratey), one of those ships that moves cargo from island to island in the tropics.
sailsstowed.jpg

(baltic trader)

A trading ship would make enough money to keep it going (boats are crazy-expensive to upkeep). By the way, a Baltic Traders can easily go for a million dollars or more.
As for the actual missionary work we’ll be doing, I think it will take place somewhere tropical. Other than that, maybe we’ll just cruise around and wait for inspiration, like Jesus did.

And, as I’m sure there will be no shortage of volunteers, if we get a smaller boat we’ll have to figure out how to arrange the crewing,etc. And also I heard that it’s somewhat complicated to sail and maneuver around islands and other boats and things, so we’ll have to figure out a way to keep from sinking. Like a rule that at least a couple people onboard at anytime know what they’re doing.

Please discuss, I want to hear everyone’s opinions on this.