The world is fraught with problems-it's time to buy a boat.

Forget Stocks, Buy a Sailboat."

That headline, believe it or not, appeared in the Wall Street Journal, over an article about alternatives to investing in the stock market. The piece included these words from a man in California: "In July 2001, I bought a sailboat with some of my savings. I'm glad I did, because since then the stock market has depreciated a lot more than my boat has."

True enough. In these days of stock market angst and returns on other investments so anemic that the hot tip from some analysts is to buy U.S. Savings Bonds, you can make the case that a sailboat is a pretty good place to park your money.

Friends of mine in the boat-selling business tell me that another sign of these strange times is motivating sailboat buyers. Some folks, they say, are acting on their dreams of owning a sailboat or of moving up to a bigger boat now because of uncertainty about the future in the age of terrorism. That makes perfect sense to me. With all manner of awful possibilities reminding us daily of our mortality, why take the chance of missing out on the joys of sailboat ownership?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should point out that this advice comes from someone who never found a time that is not the right time to buy a sailboat and is convinced sailboats are always a good investment, regardless of the state of the economy. (When my first mate, whom I've made co-owner of a veritable fleet of sailing craft over the years, reads this, I predict she will say something like, "Oh, yes, tell me about it," or perhaps something a bit more pithy.)

We all know about the pleasure of sailing; I'm talking about the pleasure of owning sailboats. There are rewards in simply possessing these lovely objects. As for being good investments, what I mean is that they put your money to work paying dividends in enjoyment. However, I do remember heady times-the years of double digit inflation-when you could buy a boat, sail it for three years, and sell it for more than you paid for it. Of course, you gave back the profit when you paid the inflated price of the replacement boat. But even so, it was nice to be able to tell my sometimes reluctant partner in boat ownership that our investment had paid off in dollars as well as fun.

I never really understood the saying about the two happiest days of your life being the day you buy your boat and the day you sell it. I get it about the first day, but being ecstatic about selling a sailboat doesn't compute for me. I've always hated to part with boats, no matter how much I needed the proceeds of their sale for the next one. If I had my way-meaning the financial means and a large BMW (boat maintenance worker) corps-I'd have kept them all. I can see them now, polished to Bristol perfection, moored in a row of slips, arranged by date of acquisition, which would also put them in perfect smallest-to-biggest order, starting with a 10-foot Dyer sailing dinghy dating to circa 1955.

It seems silly to say this about inanimate plastic objects, but I think I loved some of those boats passionately. Certainly I was convinced that the C&C 33 with the vermillion topsides that we owned nearly 30 years ago, our first "big" boat (well, it seemed big at the time), was not just our most prized possession, but the most gorgeous sailboat in the world. Which may explain why I acted so foolishly when it was about to be wrecked in a storm.

An October gale was making mincemeat of the sailboats moored in our poorly protected harbor. Ten-foot-high combers, rolling over breakwaters as though they weren't there, raked the anchorage. By the time I got to the waterfront, half a dozen boats had already been driven ashore. The fortunate ones lay beached on sand; others were being pounded to pieces on riprap. They were only the vanguard of 22 sailboats that would meet that fate in the storm. Our beloved Freelance had dragged her mooring and in the beams of the numerous headlights that played on the horrible scene I could see her stagger at the bottom of the troughs. I knew her keel was hitting the harbor bottom, and would soon be driven through her own bottom. I couldn't bear the thought.

Free her from the mooring, I told myself, and she will wash to the beach with much less damage. Without a further coherent thought, without removing my foul weather gear or shoes, I walked into the surf, waded as far as I could, then swam the remaining 50 yards to the boat, where I grabbed a lifeline and flipped myself aboard as though I were Spiderman. You could say I was a little excited-I couldn't have performed that feat in heavy, wet clothing to win a $1,000 bet without being jazzed up on adrenaline.

The three-quarter-inch nylon mooring pennants were jammed so tightly around the cleats that I had to saw through them with a rigging knife, with one hand for the knife and the other to hang on against the waves that broke over the bow. When the job was done, I crawled to cockpit, got a grip on the binnacle and rode the boat to shore (I don't remember, but I hope I didn't strike a heroic pose), where her hull took a beating, but the keel survived with light damage.

I recall this reckless behavior with mingled amusement and embarrassment. How naive. How utterly dumb! The boat was fully insured. I should have let her pound away and joined the crowd in the waterfront tavern overlooking the spectacle. There I could have ordered a properly fortified toddy and started dreaming of the new, even more beautiful and lovable boat the insurance money would buy.

I'm not the first person to love a boat, of course, and I don't think I was ever as besotted as Vito Dumas, who sailed alone around the world when it was still an unusual feat and wrote, "After sunset I went below, alone in my boat after more than a month-I could not help kissing a panel in a surge of affection for my shipmate."

It gets lonely out there, I guess. But even with plenty of warm company, we love our boats-because they are the instruments that deliver the sailing experiences we crave. For most of us, the boats spend relatively little time actually producing those experiences, but for the owner the time in between can be enjoyably spent-preparing for the next experience. We potter about on the boat, whipping and splicing, cleaning and fixing, always getting ready. Mundane chores that would be drudgery at home achieve a certain nobility when they're done in service of the boat. Because the boat-our boat-is a noble thing.

As this is written, the economy is still lousy, the stock market is spooked, and the terrorism threat level indicator has risen to orange. In other words, it's the perfect time to buy a boat.

Note to the first mate: Don't read anything into this. Our boat is only two and a half years old. The lockers still have that fresh fiberglass smell. There's no need to adjust our sailboat investment portfolio . . . yet.