$1 a pound...

A while back we were talking about the cost of boats and boat building and how it could be best expressed in terms of cost per pound/displacement...

So, the other day I came across a Pearson 303 selling for $5000. The boat is not in bad shape, has new sails, and like all boats it needs some work, it's a steal at forty-nine cents a pound.

Even if you spent an additional $5k and some sweat equity you'd still have a boat that costs slightly less than $1 a pound...

Now that's serious VolksCruiser territory.

Spending some time this weekend looking at boat ads to see if the the Pearson was an anomaly I found there were a lot of boats that seemed to be reasonable facsimiles that were being sold cheap because the economy sucks and far too many people simply cannot afford the cost of a marina berth or place to store their boat.

If I were in the market for a VolksCruiserish boat in the under 40-foot bracket my initial guideline would $1-a-foot all up because with some hard work, creativity, smarts, and slavish attention to the need/want criteria it's doable.

Doable is a great word is it not?

A CAL 27 in Hawaii...

Mongo averaged something like 125 miles a day on it's 20-day engineless passage from California to Hilo Hawaii... More about it here.

an apt quote...

“The more you know, the less you need.”
                                       -Yvon Chouinard

Is it just me or does that quote pretty much give away the secret of successful VolksCruising?

about that list...

I'm pretty sure what  appeals to a lot of people in the whole sailing off into the sunset scenario has a lot to do with, depending on your social perspective, either freedom or escape.

What was it Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster had to say on the subject of freedom?

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose..."

That's always kind of worked for me.

Which sorta/kinda brings me around to the whole being slave to The List thing...

I suppose I should mention that I also have a list which is long and, truth be told, I'll never get to the end of. Which, as it happens, is OK because if I finished the list I'd have pretty much zip to do and I like keeping busy on projects and suchlike.

The fact is you'll never finish the list either and you need to embrace that knowledge...

It's the first step to freedom.

an educational conundrum...

I find it interesting that in the sailing world so much emphasis is devoted to having the best of the best and how little emphasis there is the the process of learning how to use it...

So, just why is sailing education so unpopular here in the states? People take classes to learn to ski or scuba dive but as for sailing it seems to be more of a I don't need to take any stinking lessons attitude.

Most of my French friends who sail and cruise went to Glénans or a reasonable facsimile and most of my British friends have done RYA courses...

And, you know what? It shows.

Really.

Most folks flying the stars and stripes however never take a class and if they do it's the bare minimum requirement that gives them a piece of paper to show the bareboat folk. Sort of a somewhat problematic state of affairs...

I suspect, part of the problem is that there is not a good umbrella educational system akin to the RYA in the US of A but that does not mean there is not a good local or convenient class that folks could take... you just need to ask around.

That said, learning how to do something right is never a bad way to get started, especially for folks of a VolksCruising bent.

a good book...

Just maybe, the most influential book I've read relating to boats, boatbuilding, and cruising is not a book about boats or sailing at all...

John Muir was a smart guy, a man who understood the importance of breaking things down to basic elements, and someone who never let someone else telling him something was simply not an option slow him down.

He's also one of my personal heroes...

But, you say, what does a book about repairing a VW have to do with boats?

Well, for me, it was my introduction to the fact that I could actually do things like troubleshoot and work on cars by breaking the job at hand into simple, easy to understand segments.

Something of a eureka moment as it happens...

All of a sudden I realized that not only could I rebuild my VW's motor on the side of the road when needful but by extending the basic premise I could do almost anything from rigging a mast to learning that guitar solo that had seemed unapproachable and make it my own.

"How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive" is not just a book about fixing cars but a book of power.

Whenever I've hit the proverbial brick wall on boat building projects I always ask myself how John Muir would have approached the problem and it always seems to work.

Nuff said...

Camping...

The other day I noticed there was a Bolger sharpie for sale up in Alaska on Craig's list...

It got me thinking.

First the idea of buying a boat for cheap up in Alaska, sailing it around for the season, and then selling it or even giving it away makes for an extremely cheap five to six month vacation.

The second thing that came to mind was how it would be just the sort of experience a lot of people should have before they decide to spend copious amounts of money on the perfect boat for cruising.

Thirdly was how nice it would be to do some serious fly fishing in out-of-the-way places and camp...

Yeah, I just said the word camp as in camping and you know what?

I'm not ashamed in the least.

The word "camping" has become something of a negative word where cruising sailboats are concerned. Sort of the worst thing someone can say in polite society in fact, and at best, damning with faint praise.

Folks of a VolksCruiserish nature and bent already know what I mean but anyone with a smaller than 40 something sailboat is going to hear it used often...

"Oh, we used to have a CAL 28 and loved it but we got so tired of camping"

A while back someone asked me what sort of washer/dryer we had aboard and when I mentioned we didn't, I got the old...

"Oh, you're camping..."

The thing is I LIKE camping. Some of the best moments I've had in my life have been in little tents or sleeping under the stars as far away from what passes for civilization as I could get. Whether I was backpacking and climbing in the Himalaya, Patagonia, Alaska, or the Alps, I never felt I was having an inferior experience because I did not have a washer/dryer or some other appliance.

What's more is the lack of a lot of baggage and its inherent problems/upkeep makes me a happy camper...

You know, I still miss that van...

Dave Z and I were just having a discussion about the downside of standing out...

Back when I was in college I had a job building snowshoes and one of my tasks was painting the snowshoes with an international orange paint.

It was really bright paint.

As it was also a linear polyurethane paint, we sometimes had paint left over in the spray booth that would have to be thrown away because once it's mixed it goes off.

As it happens, I also had a 1963 VW van at the time that was in dire need of a paint job...

I expect you might know where this is going.

Anyway, the owner of the company said sure feel free to use the excess paint on your van and over the next few weeks every time I had a bit of paint left over I'd spray a panel or two on the van till, hey presto, it was international blaze orange...

Dude, you needed sunglasses just to look at it!

I was happy. I had a really tough paint job that would last forever and it was mostly free with a certain amount of sweat equity. Where's the downside?

In a word l-a-w-e-n-f-o-r-c-e-m-e-m-e-n-t... Unknowingly I had discovered the color of car that would make every law enforcement officer in the state of California foam at the mouth with an irresistible urge to pull over and hassle the hippie with the orange van.

Bummer is something of an understatement.

That said, it did teach me the importance to not stand out and be too easily recognizable to some groups of people. Which just underlines the third rule of VolksCruising...

Keep a low profile...

a couple of notes regarding engines and suchlike...

Lin Pardey recently took to a cruising forum to counter some of the misunderstanding going on regarding the whole engineless thing...

The thread is actually worth reading as Ms Pardey makes sense and reading a lot of the posts will give you some understanding about how elusive common sense is when discussion of engines, basic sailing skills, and peer pressure come into play.

Personally, the one thing about the whole engineless vs non-engineless issue that gets up my nose is the term "purist" because in all my years of sailing I've never come across a single person who chooses to not have an engine because of some concept of purity.

It is not a religion.

That said, it should be kept in mind that those without engines are also not heretics so you might want to stop and wonder why some people seem to be treating the act as heretical.

All the people I've known who don't have engines do so for a variety of reasons and usually have put some serious thought into it and, for the most part, are doing it for valid practical reasons.

The other thing that tends to come out in the discussion is the "idea" that folks without motors are judgmental about those who have engines which is simply not the case... I've yet to come across anyone without a motor who gave a tinkers damn one way or the other.

For another take on the subject it's well worth reading what Jay Fitzgerald has to say on the subject in his book "Wind and Tide: An Introduction to Cruising in Pure Sailing Craft".

Some more volkscruiser proa news...

Michael Schacht of ProaFile has released a couple of interior renderings of "Herbie" his new in-progress proa design...

Better yet, he's hinted that a forty-foot version which, I expect, has some folks (myself included) doing the happy dance.

For more info check out the continuing thread...

On making money...

Here's an excellent and concise post on the current thinking on making money while cruising. Definitely worth your time.

Bluewater cruiser for $10K or less all up...

Here's a good example...

1 to 50...

Jay Fitzgerald (whose book should be on every VolksCruisers bookshelf) has mentioned that boat size should reflect muscle power and as far he could figure that 1 to 50 was the ratio that made sense.

Offhand, I expect he's pretty close to being right on the money...

So, what does that work out to in real terms?

Let's start with someone who weighs in at 180 pounds and (giving the benefit of the doubt) is a lean and mean machine. That gives us a displacement number of 9000 pounds... A nice round number.

By today's standards, a 9000-pound displacement boat is not very big and you'd be hard pressed to find one over thirty feet in length. Just for a sense of what some popular VolksCruiserish boats displace...

• CAL 34... 9500 pounds
• CAL 28... 6000 pounds
• Pearson Vanguard... 10300 pounds
• Pearson Triton... 6930 pounds
• Columbia 34... 10500 pounds
• Coronado 32... 11800 pounds

Well, you get the idea...

Where Fitzgerald's numbers work is that they give you a  pretty good idea of what's within your physical abilities without resorting to some sort of problem prone auxiliary assistance like powered winches and suchlike.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd feel nervous about sailing a boat where such needful acts like sail handling or picking up an anchor is beyond my physical ability.

Anyway, it's something to think about.

An excellent resource for VolksCruiserish folk...

I really truly hate the words "yacht", "yachtsman" and "yachting"...

That said, Yachting Monthly is a magazine that should be on anyone's reading list who's concerned with going to sea in small boats because it has excellent content actually worth reading.

Gee, what a concept...

For instance, the current issue of Yachting Monthly has an article about Roger Taylor's fit-out of Ming Ming 2 that I suspect has more useful thought provoking information than a dozen issues of Cruising World or Sail.

The downside of the magazine is it is expensive compared to Cruising World and Sail but if you factor in the actual useful information contained per issue it's a bargain.

For those who don't already know about Yachting Monthly's various videos available for free you really should check them out as, like the following one with Roger Taylor discussing Ming Ming 2, they have an incredible lot to offer...