Not a project you should be looking at...

For about a year or so I've been rowing by this Maria vintage hurricane catamaran and wondering how I'd go about sorting out it's issues. Of course, that was before it sank...

Again.

Bringing such a boat back from the dead is a lot easier than most folks think but a lot harder and more expensive if you don't have a plan, needful skills, and the time/money to complete the boat in a timely manner. Success on such a project is all about money and time.

The thing is your plan tends to shape the cost of the project while your skill-set defines the time and together they all add up to whether a project is viable or not.

The guy who owns the boat told me he'd paid $15K for the boat which in my mind was way too much for a hurricane boat that had been holed in a few places, sunk, and without a rig. While repairing the beast was pretty straightforward the time and costs involved made it just too expensive to be flippable for a profit which pretty must killed any interest in the boat for me. However, the owner had plans to rebuild it as a houseboat/hangout zone so it sorta/kinda made sense.

Of course, time being a factor, the fact that damaged boats will continue to degrade until they're fixed, and boat left alone afloat is an evil cocktail that tends sneak up quickly and ruin your whole day/week/month/year before you have a chance to say WTF!

That said, I'm sure a lot of folks would look at such a project and think it's a VolksCruiser just waiting to happen with a little sweat, a few gallons of epoxy, and some paint.

I'll delve into the why it ain't VolksCruiser material in a couple of days.

Another book you really should read...

I mentioned this book by Keith Carver a couple of years ago but "Sailboat Cowboys Flipping Sail Post-Sandy: The Art of Buying, Repairing and Selling Storm-Damaged Sailboats" is still an excellent read on the subject of buying boats cheap, fixing them up, and selling them for a profit.

As it happens I just read it again this morning and it still holds up well and the advice contained within is still spot on.

Better yet, it's a great book to use as proof of concept when someone is telling you a cheap fixer-upper is nothing but a money pit and your dreams will all in tears. 

Just tell them to go read "Sailboat Cowboys Flipping Sail Post-Sandy: The Art of Buying, Repairing and Selling Storm-Damaged Sailboats" and let you get back to working on your DIY refit.

 

Eleven factors that come together to make a VolksCruiser...

I'm often asked just what a VolksCruiser actually is in terms of solid definition and, for the most part, my answers to that particular question tend to be somewhat vague. It's akin to Justice Stewart's famous quote on what pornography is...

"We know it when we see it"

Which is pretty much how I've approached what a VolksCruiser actually is in that I know one when I see one. Or to be more precise, I recognize a variety of factors that come together to make a boat a VolksCruiser, such as:

• Under forty feet in length
• Simple user repairable systems
• Minimal carbon footprint
• Well equipped to anchor
  
• A boat that costs no more than $1000 a foot in cruising mode
• A boat that can be sustainable on a given budget
  

Which, it would seem, also describes a whole lot of cruising boats. The catalyst of what actually makes a boat into a VolksCruiser is really the mindset of the person cruising the boat. Who will exhibit a variety of needful traits, for example:

• Creative frugality
• Sensible maintenance strategies
• Critical thinking
• A keen sense of situational awareness
• An elevated understanding of value as related to budget
  

Throw all those various factors together and you're in VolksCruiser territory.

Obviously, "less than $1000 a foot" is a pretty wide range of boats and the whole VolksCruiser vibe centers around the "Less is more" thought process so that the actual cost of a VolksCruiser in cruising mode really should be significantly less.

Next up on the subject we'll be talking about the reality of how a VolksCruiser budget might work...