a floating home that moves...

For some folks, the whole idea of a boat as a home is a tough concept to get their head around and I can’t bother to explain it to them. I expect since you’re here that you get the concept in some shape or form and because it interests you.

Then again, maybe you’re here for a whole different reason. If you are, I’d like to know why...

Anyway, in my experience, there are two ways to consider a boat as a home; the first is a boat can be a home that takes you where you want to go as opposed to the other sort which are homes that float. While there is some overlap between the two, a VolksCruiser is the sort of boat that will take you where you want to go.

The concept of nomadic living, whether seaborne or land bound, has a lot to do with various factors like climate, income, economics, and survival. A newish factor is the idea of travel for enjoyment, which is a very different ball park indeed.

Most people entertaining the idea of living aboard and cruising the world stems from a mix of the various factors or all of the above, though percentages may vary.

I’ve met a lot of cruisers who avoid winter, some on budgets, and others because they want to do something different that the same old same.

Some of those cruisers have lots of money while others have a lot less, which is just how it goes in our current world situation

Same as it ever was.

Nomadic folks can, with a bit of homework, cruise in comfort. All it takes is some situational awareness and a willingness to cruise outside the established cruising routes to achieve a “lot less” budget.

More about that soon come.

a well made point...

Now this is depressing...

Folks living on boats have always been a somewhat iffy affair in what passes for the normal social order. Made a whole lot worse by the fact that there is a great diversity within the cruising and live-aboard communities.

Certainly not the film I'd make on the subject.

The current state of extreme income disparity is a big part of the problem. It's important to keep in mind that what affects destitute folks taking shelter on boats is also going to create problems for just about anyone who calls their boat home.

Far too often I've seen cruisers disparage live-aboards and accept or even back anti-boat legislation only to find that a couple of years later that those laws are now keeping them from anchoring in places because some rich idiot doesn't want his ocean view sullied by a boat at anchor. The bottom line is that shore people tend to lump most all boat folk into one big group that they'd like somewhere else unless they can make a profit off you.

What the answer is escapes me. For most of us in the VolksCruising fraternity the best course of action seems to be just keep moving as well as keeping a low profile. When staying in a place for longer than is prudent it helps to be as legal as possible as you don't want to give the powers that be any extra reasons to hassle you.

Just sayin'

Bozo's back in town...

Some time ago I wrote a post over on BB regarding internal ballast and as I have a lot of questions/remarks on the subject in my email  today which induced a strong case of Déjà vu so I thought I'd re-post it here..

******

Looking at my mailbag this morning I notice that not everyone agrees that a sharpie makes sense as a cruising boat.

Now, I actually get that as sharpies (or scows/whatever) are just that little bit different and folks don't generally like things that either makes them think about how things work or interfere with their slavish devotion to conformity and nothing I can say will change those folks minds so I'm not even going to try... Life, as they say, is simply too short.

On the other hand, several readers have written and asked a couple of questions...

The answer to the most popular question is... Nope, you do not need a keel for ballast purposes. A keel is mainly about providing a lateral plane to allow the boat to sail to windward but other forms of lateral planes work just as well (centerboards and lee boards come to mind) and, while it is true that using the keel as a handy place to put ballast is no bad thing, it is not the only way to skin a cat... Don't believe me?

Back when I was a kid I had a Bozo punching clown and the physics involved in punching the clown taught me everything I need to know about internal ballast and the fact that it works just fine.

Hit him once and he pops back up. Hit him a bunch of times and guess what... he still keeping popping up. Wrestle him to the floor and hold him down till he cries "uncle" (hey, I was an imaginative kid) and as soon as you let him go up he comes...

Throw him in the pool and invert him so his head is pointing to the bottom and let go... Guess what happens!

Like I said, internal ballast works just fine!

For those folks who like their facts without the clown element, Wooden Boat Magazine had a great issue about sharpies a bunch of years back and you can buy issue 114 as a digital download for $3.50 (just a warning but our Bolger Loose Moose 2 design was a featured sidebar).

good, better, best...

I spend a lot of tie trying to come up with cunning plans where one can build a boat that works for less money which, I'll admit if something of a frustrating addiction. Made worse as budget building stalwarts like plywood, lumber, and industrial epoxies keep going up in price. 

This last week I've been thinking of ballast as a friend is designing an interesting scow trailer sailor with ballasted dagger board/keels which I expect to be fairly expensive to have cast. Of course it's always possible to cast your own but lead is a very scary medium to work with and I personally don't want to kill off my few remaining brain cells. Throw in the fact that lead keeps getting more and more expensive and I find myself looking at various alternatives.

Water can be a good ballast and, for all practical purposes it's free. The downside is that water ballast takes up a lot of internal space when compared to lead. A cubic foot of lead weighs in at 708.06 pounds while a cubic foot of water weighs only 62.43 pounds.

Big difference.

Let's say we want to build a sharpie that requires a ton of internal ballast what does that look like in various ballast scenarios...

• Water = 32 cubic feet
  
• Sand = 19.61 cubic feet
• Water filled sand = 15.7 cubic feet
• Concrete = 14 cubic feet
• Steel = 4.06 cubic feet
• Lead = 2.82 cubic feet
• Gold = 1.66 cubic feet 

Most of us building small boats find the needed space for water, sand and water filled sand take up too much room but they are for all practical purposes free and many boats have been successfully built and cruised using them as ballast.

Concrete is a bit more realistic and I've seen a lot of concrete ballasted wood boats that worked just fine. Concrete is cheap and easy to work with so not a bad option for home builders.

Steel also makes a lot of sense and there always seems to be a source of one inch used plate available for not very much that you can cut down to more manageable ballast bits. 

Lead is the top choice for most folks but it is expensive in ingot or shot and a lot more dangerous to work with than prudent.

I included gold for those folks who write me all the time telling me I'd be a fool to go sailing on a boat that does not use the very best components available in its build and that you get what you pay for. I did however omit Uranium which would make awesome ballast except for the fact that the idea of glow in the dark testicles does not really appeal.

So, the question of what sort of ballast is pretty much up to you. For me the most attractive ballast compromise would be a mix of concrete with scrap lead or steel added to the mix. if I build the internally ballasted sharpie design I'm working on or a cast concrete/graphene/lead shot keel if I build the Skrowl 900.

More on building an affordable hull to put the ballast in soonish....

 

a VolksCruiser design brief...

 
For me the whole budget thing is colored by something the great motion picture camera designer, Raoul Coutard, who designed the pivotal Eclair NPR said when someone asked him how to design a hand holdable self-blimped camera...

"First, you start with a quiet camera."

Over the years I've found this bit of logic adaptable to most things in my life because it simply tells you to look at the core of the problem first. Sadly, a very unpopular method these days...

But, I suppose, we're talking about budgets so to adapt Coutard's thought process to cruising and boats...

"First, you start with an inexpensive boat with simple systems"

Sounds simple does it not? 

Most of the advice I'm given related to budget boats and VolksCruisers in particular tend to go against that simple advice and suggests that one should try and replicate more expensive and complicated boats. This sort of advice, if followed, unsurprisingly results in expensive and complicated boats.

So if we're not going to emulate complicated and expensive boats what should a VolksCruiser be?

First off, since the coat of boats can be measured in size and weight, the a VolksCruiser should be as small and lights as possible. Obviously a 25-foot design is going to be a lot cheaper than a 35-foot design.

The problem is that smaller designs with good accommodation and internal stowage are a lot harder to design than larger boats. Another issue of smaller boats is that they are problematic for things like dinghy stowage and solar panels. On our Cal 34 I only have room for about 500-watts of solar panels and a small nesting dinghy as anything more starts to get in the way of sailing the boat.

One of the biggest issues of turning an old classic plastic boat into a VolksCruiser is that, in most cases, you reach a point where you 're at cross purposes with the designers original concept of what the boat was designed to do. Which, I can attest from personal experience, can be a serious challenge to one's sanity.

Not that it can't be done but it does have it's "coo coo for cocoa puffs" moments and challenges.

Building a VolksCruiser would actually be a lot easier on a couple of levels but as there are not a lot of folks designing VolksCruisers and adapting a stock design is just as problematic as changing a classic plastic into a VolksCruiser without the benefit of the low material costs that you get buying an older boat in a world where a lot of great boats are selling for less than the cost/value of their ballast.

I can think of a number of ways to radically bring down the cost of a new build but they all fly in the face of standard practices, scandalize the neighbors, and you'd wind up being "that guy" who built the freak show boat.

 

Been there, done that, and got the t-shirt.

Still, of late, I've been having some Raoul Coutard moments where a few concepts are morphing into something a bit like a boat...

More about that soonish.

and in the best rig for a VolkCruiser department...

Yann Quenet showing off a balanced lug roller reefing set up.

a near perfect VolksCruiser...

A tour of an Alberg 30 with Atom Voyager.

on budgets and boat bucks...

Good Old Boat has an article on the subject of Boat Bucks and it got me thinking...

I suspect that if you read VolksCruiser you’re on a tight budget or looking for ways to make cruising more affordable or maybe you’re just slumming.

It occurred to me that the biggest problem of the VolksCruiser gig is that most folks can’t even say what sort of budget they’re on. Admitting that stuff is too expensive because someone might think less of you is a real problem.

It’s not always easy to embrace one’s place in a social order where what’s in your wallet has more value than the sort of person you are. It sucks.

Having a couple of boat blogs, I get an amazing amount of unsolicited advice. About 99% of said advice is people telling me the answer to my problems is to throw money at them. For instance, I have watermaker that works very well. It’s made thousands of trouble-free gallons of water, but I still get emails telling me I’d be better off with a more expensive system.

When I lost our mast, I received many emails. They said either go out and buy a new mast or just get a new boat. I did not have $20K to buy a new mast, rig and sails. If I could not afford a new rig, where was I going to come up with the $750K that a new catamaran would have cost? People were telling me that the only new boat to get was a frelling condomaran. Talk about peer pressure.

I also get emails from people cowed by peer pressure. Since they cannot afford to buy a new cat, they tell me how they’ll put off their dream of cruising until they can afford to do it right. 

What the fuck is that all about?

Doing it right for some might mean doing it at a certain budget and if they can’t do it that way, it’s not worth doing. That’s nuts. Doing it right means getting it done at an acceptable level of comfort, safety, and within an affordable budget.

To steal a line from Dickens, we’re living in the worst and best of times for cruising. Technology is a wonderful thing and if you can escape the consumerism trap there are many advantages you can take advantage of. Being stuck in a consumerist world where anything old has no value, you can pay pennies on the dollar for the gear you lusted after just a year ago.

Today, with a little homework, a bit of sweat equity, and some scrounging, you can outfit a boat for a fraction of the money that the boat bucks crowd can. Even better yet, refitting a classic plastic design with the added tool of affordable tech makes for a boat better than it was new.

The problem is not that you can’t afford to cruise, it’s about trying to cruise on an unrealistic budgetary framework. Admit your budget is what it is. Use your brain power to find a sustainable solution to making it work in a manner you can afford and be proud of.

Some changes in an old boat...

Most late 60s and early 70s classic plastic sailboats of the 34-foot variety are actually pretty good boats but exceptionally challenged in the cruising stowage department. It’s not that they are too small but that the long-term cruising stowage was just not part of the design brief.

 

So if you’re looking at buying a classic plastic racer-cruiser for VolksCruising you’re going to have to use some wasted space. On the positive side, most 34ish classic plastics have plenty of wasted space that you can easily work with.

For my 1969 CAL 34, it was fairly easy to add a significant amount of stowage with a little thought. For instance, by raising the floor of the dinette and dinette seats by a foot, which added almost ten cubic feet of storage. Better yet, the raised dinette also improved the view through the port lights so you’re able to have something to look at with your Sunday pancakes.

Since we only need one quarter berth for passages, we use the port quarter berth as a dedicated stowage area. This opened up a considerable space that would otherwise go unused.

As we no longer have an inboard engine on “So It Goes”, the engine area and space just before it became yet another dedicated space for spare materials, batteries, and suchlike.

Last, in the cockpit, we decide to lose most of the cockpit footwell in the forward part of the cockpit. This gave us a cavernous hold for all of our dive gear and other needful boat stuff. That it also decreased the floodable volume of the cockpit was a win/win and increased stowage while making the boat safer.

None of these changes alter the look of the boat radically. They were all fairly simple, cost little, and could apply to most plastic classic boats.

One of my favorite classic plastic sailboats is the Bill Tripp designed Columbia 34 MK 2 CB and I keep my eye out for one of the non-cored versions which would be a great project along these lines.

A VolksCruiser of note...

I've long wanted to build a small canal cruiser for the time that I'm past my sailing days. Philip Thiel's Joli Boat has always been at the top pf my list and a great example of getting the most livability into a 22'9" X 8' envelope.

As it happens "Small Boats Magazine" has an excellent article on the Joli Boat's little sister the Escargot design that is well worth the read. For those interested in the design the Wooden Boat Store has plans for the Joli Boat and Escargot.

an old boat to start the year with...

I know I've talked about the Bill Lapworth designed CAL 34 more than a time or two but it is the boat I happen to be sitting on while writing this. 

Back in 1969, when “So it Goes” was new, the boat sold for $15,950. or thereabouts. Today, a turnkey CAL 34 in good shape with no actual issues will set you back somewhere around $15K. Considering it’s a fifty-three-year-old boat, that says a lot.

The CAL 34 is a great example of what makes sense in a VolksCruiser. It sails well with good accommodation and has a reasonable draft (five foot). Plus, it looks like what most folks think a boat should look like.

Truth is, the boat is, all things considered, a pretty brilliant design. Bill Lapworth's use of space is quite the optimum layout, and you’d find that coming up with something better is nigh on impossible. I know I’ve tried to no avail.

I’ll add that the whole looking like what most folks consider a boat’s supposed to look like is no bad thing. Blending in to keep a low profile makes sense for low budget nomadic VolksCruiser folk.

Like most boats of the late 60s and early 70s, the CAL was a well-built sailboat. Their longevity is testament to that fact. Sure, the interior had little in the way of bespoke carpentry, but competently done. Far too many people confuse anything less than a high end furniture finish as somehow being deficient. On a cruising boat, a durable and easily maintained finish just makes a lot more sense.

The mistake most people make when working on a boat like the CAL 34 is to forget just how good a design it is and try to morph the boat into something it’s not. Of course, if you really feel that you need a Hallberg-Rassy you should get one. Trying to make a CAL 34 into a new Hallberg-Rassy is a lost cause you'd want to avoid unless your kink is of the yacht induced masochism variety.

As far as things go, the best practice concerning classic plastic sailboats is to keep the boat as close to what it looked like back when it was new. You might find that getting a brochure is a big help.

Well, maybe best not to emulate the plaid upholstery.

Next up are some changes that would make sense…