Let's see, I'm feeling grumpy today so here's one or two:
SOs who change their participation/toleration of the sport once a relationship is cemented with a ring.
People who claim to want to know how to sail, then start making fun of and complaining about the fact that there are different names for everything including the whole port/starboard thing, and continue on that theme even after it's demonstrated that if you can't refer to something quickly without ambiguity somebody could get hurt or your results will suffer.
People that insist on having inane, drunken, giggly, and generally stupid drawn-on conversations on any channel on the VHF. On the same thing, anybody on a boat that allows somebody else on that boat to do that. Usually by the drunken girlfriends of owners of penis boats doing 85-100 mph on the way to the next dock bar, but I've heard sailors just as guilty. They even seem to get upset when somebody uses the channel for something useful while they're chatting.
The general state of the boat stores available - Typically you must visit just about every store in the area to get what you need for a project, and I'm not talking about hard to find stuff. A lot of the stores are focusing more on clothing than the actual things boats need. We need an APS that also caters to larger boats...
Jet-skis - I really can't complain here, because, well, I don't know if I should really admit this, but, ok, here it is - I own one.... Actually, truth be known, in our little corner of the sailing world (Galesville, MD), the jet skiers are generally a well behaved lot that don't bother us. The real stinking eeedeeeooots are the nut jobs in the large semi-displacement power boats that seem to forget that the throttle can be used to avoid situations (as in slow down and let traffic pass). These guys have been the ones passing too close to smaller boats (sail and power) throwing up a wall-of-water wake for us to slam into after we spent the previous couple of minutes debating evasive maneuvers and whether we needed to dive off the boat before impact. They seem to think that just because they can afford that brand new Tsunami-53 with auto-leveling swim platform that the intellect to operate it responsibly came as one of the options along with the full wet bar and happy ending masseuse.
Phew. Glad I got that off my chest....
Oh, wait, I have another one - the people that shipped my set of Brownell boat stands for the F-27. After the shipping charges had already been paid for in the original bill, they decided to tack on an additional "lift gate" fee more than a month later and proceed to bill mercilessly for it. I understand the lift gate fee, but not mentioning it when it was incurred and after the shipping was already paid... So, shipping companies shipping shippables for ships are on my list. Shipheads.
Ok, I'm done...
