Thanks for the birthday wishes. It has been a great day.
Our family was very poor when I was growing up and every gift was memorable.
My Dad used to pick up bike parts from the tip and we would build our own bikes or each other bikes, in secret, for birthdays etc. Kids at school were actually jealous because we would reconfigure ours bikes about three times a week whilst they were stuck with just the one new bike. We had bikes with racing bike seats and motorbike handle bars long before BMX was even dreamt off. Maybe someone watched us doing jumps and breaking forks.
So as a kid I did receive many memorable gifts that cost nothing and though the boat cost far from nothing the work that went into getting it was amazing. Chris worked on Sundays, cleaning boats, at the boat yard to pay off half of the boat. I was not aware as I was taking either my Daughter or Stepson to their respective sports. My computer repairs took $800 off the price. The owner of the yard took $1000 off the original price, pretended to give Chris a tradein of $1500 for the old motor and fitted the newer motor for $1000 ($2700 list price). In reality it means he took $1500 off and gave us a better motor.
He said Chris worked so hard but wasn't going to make up the shortfall by today (even though he kept increasing her pay) and he thought she deserved to make it so he arranged the finance for the final $1000 as we were getting the boat at cost price and he couldn't reduce it any more.
I'll be making the payments on that and being extra special and doting on Chris for the next fifty years.
As it stands the boat will cost us $1248 (over 2 years) out of our pocket and 15 x 3 hour shifts of Chris's labour. Even at $20 an hour would only be $900.
Plus the $800 from the computer work = $2948
The original sale price was $4900 with the old motor (81 50hp) + $2700 for the new motor minus $1500 tradein for the old = $6100