SCOW just may be the new black...

Speaking of scows...

Dave Z has some thoughts on the subject and a friend in France seems to have a cunning plan!

Two scows to keep an eye on...

For those who don't think a boat can be built quickly, you might want to check out the small cruising scow currently being built by Yann Quenet and his ongoing photo coverage of the process...

Of course, for our purposes Yann's SKROWL is too small for our VolksCruiser purpose but it would certainly scale up nicely and an 8 meter version would not take very much longer to build all things considered.

Speaking of scaled up scows we're all waiting on some new glimpses of Tad Roberts upscaled Harry or H38...

Cool stuff...

A quick need/want refresher...

Having a couple of boat related blogs that tend to fixate on the less expensive side of things, I get quite a lot of mail of the "how-can-I-have-the-stuff-I-want-for-not-a-lot-of-money" sort.

I'm pretty sure my answers to those folks are almost always disappointing because the words 'want' and the phrase 'not a lot of money' seldom, if ever, play well together.

For instance, a bunch of years ago I really, really wanted a Krogen 38 because it had just about everything I wanted in a cruising boat... Shoal draft, good performance, flush deck, good headroom, and a civilized interior suitable for long term living aboard. In other words, the perfect boat for me!

Well, except for the little fact that back then a new Krogen 38 was completely out of my price range (unless I took up a life of crime and went into politics or won the lottery).

Not having a talent for crime and since my luck is the kind that is sort of reverse to what one wants (the only lottery I ever won was the one for my draft number which I most certainly did not want to win!) the Krogen, as a new boat, was simply unattainable...

Sadly, today a used Krogen 38 is still far more than I can afford or what I care to spend on a boat.

So how to get what I felt I needed (Shoal draft, good performance, flush deck, good headroom, and a civilized interior suitable for long term living aboard) for what I could afford?

An older boat to rehab was my first choice but the search for a possible boat was unsuccessful as there are just not a lot of real shoal draft boats in the used market that actually sail well.

So instead, I built a Bolger sharpie as something of a stopgap because living in Paris was expensive and being able to move on to a boat would allow me to save money towards the sort of boat I wanted (I still dreamed of the Krogen) and we could sail to our hearts content when we wanted to in the meantime...

Loose Moose nestled in its Paris (Joinville le Pont) suburb berth which we paid $66 a month for including water/electric/showers.

We only planned to have Loose Moose for a couple of years but it was so comfortable and sailed so well that we wound up living on it for nearly five years... It may not have been the boat we wanted but it did fulfill our needs.

Loose Moose saved us so much money on Paris rents alone that we were able to amass enough cash to pay Phil Bolger to design Loose Moose 2 to better fill our needs  and build it.

The build and outfitting of Loose Moose 2 came to a fraction of what a Krogen 38 would have cost us and was entirely paid for by our savings from living on Loose Moose. Most folks get and understand the cheap and affordable boat thing but, what most folks don't understand is Loose Moose 2 (and Loose Moose before it) were both awesome boats...

Fact is, in my wants department Loose Moose 2 beat the Krogen on every point except a flush deck. It had a better more livable interior, more easily accessible storage space, good headroom anywhere you actually needed it, and would out sail and show its transom to a Krogen without even raising a sweat. Oh yeah, it could also SAIL in two feet of water!

What Wooden Boat Magazine had to say about Loose Moose 2

Which is a long and roundabout way of saying if you address your needs you just might find you get what you want.

Solving the cost per pound equation one step at a time...

Most people don't realize it but it is really rather easy to make building or rehabbing a sailboat a whole lot more affordable...

For example, let's look at hatches since I recently replaced a few on "So It Goes".

My options were to buy new hatches, try and find used hatches, or build new hatches. Of course, it's really a little more complicated because there is a real plethora of hatches available at a variety of price points and quality levels...

Take this Bomar for instance...

It's a really nice hatch, it's stainless and seriously heavy duty! The problem is it also costs way more than I care to pay at $849 for the size needed.

On the other hand, I could always go with a less expensive hatch but the cheapest I'm going to find is going to be around $300 or so... Not happy making!

Used ones always seem to have issues as people mostly replace them when they leak so there is a good chance I'd just be buying someone else's problems.

So why not build? The material to make a strong and leak-proof hatch are at most (including hardware) $75, it's an easy project well within the abilities of anyone who can walk and chew gum at the same time, and they're more likely to not leak than the various expensive made to order hatches available these days... Do I hear an AMEN!?

The three hatches I recently built for our boat to replace the leaky Lewmars took a half day of less than inspired work while costing a sum total of about $60 for the wood, glass/epoxy, and hardware. So you might say that I've saved between $840 to $2487 dollars.

As far as I know, the best discussion and how-to of building hatches is in Fred Bingham's "Boat Joinery & Cabinetmaking Simplified"...

...It's always worked for me.

but, then again, with a cunning plan and a thick skin...

OK, I think I've made my point that you cannot build a boat with a VolksCruiser budget if you play the game the way everybody tells you it has to be played.

So, you have a choice, you can either play by the rules or go rogue, step outside the accepted norms of sailboat fashion, and scandalize the neighborhood.

Give it some thought... It's really not an easy decision because your choice of boat and lifestyle, if you don't toe the fashionable party line, very much affects how folks relate to you and not always in a positive way.

I know because I built this boat and sailed it to a lot of places...

To say that a shoal draft, scow bowed, free-standing gaff cat rig sharpie upset some people's idea of the proper order of things would be something of an understatement...

Heads may have exploded...


Now if you can live with a bit of negative reaction, really pissing off some folks, and the odd head exploding...

...Stick around and we'll try and sort out the whole getting on the water for less gig!

More than likely some facts you don't want to hear...

It seems obvious to me how costs get out of control when you start thinking bigger boat but, from reading many emails from readers of Boat Bits, a lot of folks think there is some sort of magic workaround that allows them to get around it. I think it has something to do with magic beans or some such...

Bigger just costs more and it's a fact, just like death and taxes, that is inescapable. So, what's a poor boy going to do?

In my own case, I'd really like to have a fifty-foot schooner...

George Buehler's Melquiades is pretty close to what I have in mind. It's a pretty simple and easily built design so why don't I build one?

The simple fact is that just about the best I can do to put a boat on the water as a home builder comes out at around $10 a pound and if we look at the displacement of Melquiades, which is 61,500 pounds, that makes for a $615,000 price tag... Can you spell O-U-C-H?

Being ever the optimist on things non-political, I have a feeling that just maybe, I could actually build a Mel for maybe $7 a pound (hey, I'm real cheap and great at scrounging) but that still leaves me with a bill around $430,500...

So let's take a look at what happens when we get into the under 40-foot zone and, since we started with a Buehler boat, will stick with his 37-foot Jenny design. Jenny displaces 25,480 pounds so that brings my costs to somewhere between $178K to $250K which is a lot better but still way too high...

Obviously boats with a serious chunk of displacement are going to be problematic for the person on a VolksCruiser budget...

More on this soonish!

A quick checklist...

How to tell if a boat is a VolkCruiser...

1. It's affordable by someone on a blue-collar budget.
2. It's 40-feet or less.
3. It has VERY simple systems.
4. It has a minimal carbon footprint.
5. It's owner repairable.

More on this tomorrow.

About the Adventure 40...

The whole VolksCruiser concept is, you might say, the polar opposite to what's going on over at Attainable Adventure Cruising with their ongoing design riff of the Adventure 40...

The Adventure 40 is an interesting concept but it is most certainly not the sort of thing we're talking about with the VolkCruiser and, I expect, that if you're someone who is attracted to the Adventure 40 idea you're not going to be happy with the whole VolksCruiser thang and vice versa.

Not that I'm knocking the Adventure 40, just that it is simply a very different thought process and mostly incompatible with the whole VolksCruiser mindset and budget parameters.

Just saying...

For one, the VolksCruiser is not a boat design but more a state of mind. There is no one true path and your VolksCruiser can be a design you build, an old classic plastic derelict you rehab, or simply a boat you buy.

If there is any mantra attached to this enterprise it is of the "less is more" sort and that the operative word is sustainable...

I'll repeat that... S-U-S-T-A-I-N-A-B-L-E.

Next time we'll talk a little about what sustainable actually means...

I Might be splitting hairs...

Speaking of VolksCruisers in general, a reader recently pointed out a book and asked me for my opinion and it raised a bit of a question...

What the hell exactly does affordable actually mean?

"Twenty Affordable Sailboats to Take You Anywhere" by Gregg Nestor is not a bad book... Fact is, we seem to like a lot of the same boats...

That said, the last time I checked the Island Packet 31's seemed to go for between $35-65K, Pacific Seacraft 31's are around $65-160K, and the Cape Dory 33 from $30k up to around $60k or so.

Which brings us back to the point of what exactly is affordable to you? Personally, I find sliding scale words like affordable, inexpensive, and reasonable pretty useless unless it also includes a key like the words "plastic surgeon" as in the sentence...

"John, a plastic surgeon, found the Swan 80 both comfortable and affordable".

Now, one wonders what sort of a boat would pop up if you were to start a sentence with...

"Fred, an assistant manager at a Denny's..."

Well, I'm pretty sure we're not going to be talking Swan or Hallberg Rassy!

Which is not to say that "Twenty Affordable Sailboats to Take You Anywhere" is not a good book, it is. I just found the title rather unfortunate.

For a book that Fred, our assistant manager fighting the good fight at Denny's might find more useful, I'll point you to the really excellent "Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere" by John Vigor of a similar ilk.

Just good but not great...

Since we're speaking of sharpies I really have to mention Phil Bolgers Breakdown Schooner...

It's always been one of my favorite love/hate designs and, as such, deserves a bit of discussion.

Of course, it has a lot working for it... Shoal draft, reasonable accommodation, a low sorta/kinda tabernacled rig that stows within the length of the hull, easy to build, cheap, centerboard, water ballast, and it comes apart into three pieces...

Then again, it has a lot not quite right... It's a bit light, there is a huge amount of (in my opinion) misused/wasted space, the rig is over complicated for most folks tastes, centerboard, it has water ballast, and it comes apart into three pieces...

See my problem?

Now admittedly, the water ballast and three piece issues are only an issue if you build the design as drawn. The water ballast is easily replaced if you have a mind to with scrap steel/cement/lead/whatever. The same goes for the three piece issue as you simply build the boat in one piece instead of three. As for the less than robust scantlings, that is easily fixed by simply doing what most amateur boatbuilders do all the time anyway, which is to build beefier than designed.

The centerboard in this design has a whole set of issues/problems that drove me right over the edge into leeboard territory. Which, as it happens, is just fine because I really like leeboards!

That said, the rather huge area amidships just bothers me as it is... well, the word problematic does come to mind.

I've always thought that this design really should have been Bolger's pivotal cruising sharpie but that he got distracted with the novelty of the whole breakdown thing and, as a result, it escaped being a great design settling for good but very interesting.

In the grand scheme of things though, it really would be a great design to sit down and rethink for a round the world cruise...

For those wanting to hear what Phil has to say about the Breakdown Schooner it has it's own chapter in "Boats With an Open Mind".