RLW at Boat Bits recently had this to say:

Now I'm as much of a "guy" to go all silly and drool over a seriously fine tool or piece of gear"¦ Let's take a look at the Boye Boat knives as an example. Incredible steel and workmanship and design that is really pretty awesome. The cobalt steel blades are as rust free as you can get"¦ But the price of $360 (though on sale for $270 at the moment) is simply a lot of money for something that really does not work any better than the Gerber folder I have been using for three years now which is still rust free and sharp enough to shave with. The fact that I only paid $18 bucks for it makes me wonder just how needful the cobalt way more money stuff is in the whole "real world" scheme of things.

All that said the Boye knives are some kind of wonderful, but it brings up the whole need/want thing on boats and if you ask yourself Do I really need to spend $270 on a sheath knife (Boye does make a folder for $99 (on sale) or will that Gerber (or Buck or whatever) for $20-25 work just as well? [Read more...]

Navagear knows exactly how you feel! We're faced with this all the time. I recently had a chance to try some $180 sunglasses designed specifically for sailors. I was pretty excited, since I usually buy <$20 sunglasses and wear them until I break or lose them.

I was shocked, SHOCKED to discover that these fancy expensive high-end French sunglasses included an array of absolutely atrocious optical anomalies and aberrations. They were unusable, in my opinion, inducing a headache after about 15 minutes. Thanks, but I'll stick with my $20 bicycling glasses.