In search of a good boat pen?

This post is both trivial and yet damn important. I’m talking about having a reliable pen on the boat and not paying a pirate’s ransom for it. Let me be clear here, when I say “good pen for the boat” I’m not talking a fancy Mother-of-pearl Mont Blanc engraved with the boat’s name. I’m talking about a pen that can get the job done in the cruel marine environment.

My pen needs to be able to write at all kinds of odd angles, work in the cold, and most importantly work through water and oil! Yea I’m talking about full bore industrial pens. Something we can count on when it comes time to put important information down on paper!

When I first went looking for said pen I thought it would be easy, there are tons of industries that I presumed would require bullet proof writing instruments: auto mechanics, oil & gas industry, truck drivers, mining, contractors, longshoremen, tugboat captains, etc.

However after untold hours of searching I couldn’t find the pens I was looking for. The best I could find and originally went with was a Fisher space pen cartridge that I crammed into a Foray body. The Fischer pen cartridge had all the writing attributes I was looking for, but none of the Fisher bodies had a clip. I really want a clip on my pens so they don’t roll all over the place or fall out of my pocket when I’m on deck. So my solution was to hack together two pens into one functional pen.

I’m not sure if it’s Murphy’s law, but as soon as I had cobbled together my Frankenstein pen and was ready to carry on with my life, I found what I was originally looking for, Grrr…

An inexpensive pack of ten ballpoint pens with clips, retractable points, 7mm tips, rubber grips, writes upside down, functional below freezing and can combat water and oil. I had previously searched Amazon but didn’t see these pens originally, but when I did I couldn’t click the purchase button fast enough.

I’ve had them for about two months now and I can say “They are almost perfect” I would like the ink line to be a tad bolder, However at this point I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

It still baffles me why finding industrial pens for outdoor use are so difficult to find, from the responses I got from Staples, Office Depot, and OfficeMax.(I even tried Home Depot thinking just maybe) you would have thought I was asking for a Russian spy pen. No, I just wanted a pen that I can count on in at sea and if I did lose it overboard or something I wouldn’t be out $20-$30. Hopefully my trial and tribulations on this Unicorn hunt is helpful. ­

Cheers,
Island Rambler.