Sunday, January 31, 2016

A great resource...

Walkin the talk...



Their website is a real cornucopia of good solid cruising and sailing information so really belongs in your bookmarks.

Monday, January 25, 2016

a book you need to get...

I bought "Tiny Floating Homes" by Chris Troutner and read it over the weekend.

It's good.

You should read it.

Need I really say more?

Sunday, January 24, 2016

Nobody (important) really cares...

Face it, a lot of folks put far too much importance on what other people think...

Ya think?

I've lost track of the number of times someone has told me that they'd love to go cruising but they can't afford to do it in the style and fashion they believe is required to fit in comfortably in what they seem to believe is some sort of high school fashion clique from hell.

Or, to use a more concrete example, that if you show up in an anchorage with a funky classic plastic or homebuilt that you'll find yourself in the equivalent of social hell or limbo, people will point in derision, and you won't get to hang out with the cool kids...

Of course, none of us ever want to repeat our angst-ridden high school experiences so I do get the fear of not fitting in and it's understandable.

But...

Here's the thing, most everyone is so busy worrying that they won't fit in and you'll be judging them, that they really don't give a shit what sort of boat you show up in at an anchorage.

Really.

Which is not to say there are not a few patheticly insecure folk whose only coping mechanism is to try and make other people's lives miserable. Lucky for us they are a tiny minority of the folks out cruising and tend to posse-up with other like-minded damaged souls and, since they pretty much stay amongst themselves, they're really not all that problematic and not important at all.

Yeah, just like high school.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Simplicity vs comfort or something like it...

Over at Two at Sea they're talking about simplicity...

Well, actually they're not as it happens. What they are talking about really has nothing to do with simplicity and everything to do with defending the status quo of consumerist yachting. That said, you should really make sure to read it because anyone thinking about VolksCruising is going to hear this argument a lot.

First of all, I really need to go on record that I have Two at Sea on my RSS feed because it is one of the better cruising blogs around, I agree with about 97% of what I read there, and they are a great resource you might want to have bookmarked.

Secondly, I don't have any issues with folks cruising at higher budgets in general, having all the toys that they can cram into their boat, or otherwise cruise differently than I do. Well, unless they bitch and moan about how expensive it is in the process. Go ahead, and by all means buy the $5K virgin latex mattress or the $25K integrated instrument system if you want to but, if you do, you don't get to bitch and moan about how much it costs.

What I do have problems with is bogus arguments like the comfort vs simplicity one when the real argument should be complication vs simplicity as comfort really has nothing to do with it.

The idea that someone with a simplicity-oriented boat can't have things like hot water, a watermaker, showers, electric lights, and refrigeration is really something of a disingenuous argument. It's also a disingenuous argument with a lot of traction and the whole idea that simplifying your cruising life is akin to Neanderthal camping sans even the most basic comforts is easily the most popular misconception regarding cruising.

From where I sit, comfort, both as a concept and a reality, is actually quite simple and neither problematic or expensive to provide. So well within the realm of VolksCruisers on a budget.

Fact of the matter is, if there's one great single factor for me that gets in the way of comfort and me being a happy camper it's needless complication, bad systems, and things that break down.

Sadly, these days, most are so brainwashed that comfort, satisfaction, happiness, and value is all about stuff, how much stuff we have, and the cost of our stuff in comparison to other people's stuff that we no longer even know what real comfort or value is anymore.

One of the first things I ask myself every time I do a need/want breakdown on boat stuff is whether getting something will make my life aboard better and comfort is always a prime consideration as it should be. Life, in my opinion, being way too frelling short to be uncomfortable when you don't have to be. Being comfortable is very much in the need category and if you're not factoring that into the formula you're not going to be a very happy camper.

Need I really mention that being a happy camper is really the prime directive?

Friday, January 8, 2016

a niche market of sorts...

Since I've been working on the VolksCruiser project I've noticed a certain niche market in used boats. The upshot is that someone buys a dirt cheap boat that is not selling for pennies on the dollar and then cleans it up (as in just throwing away junk and some liberal application of soap and water) then resells it for a chunk of change more and then simply repeats the process with another boat.

What a great business model! There's obviously no shortage of old boats that need to be cleaned and de-cluttered...

While cleaning up a boat is often not a job not for the faint of heart or squeamish it's not really that hard and as a clean uncluttered boat is worth more than a mold farm and a whole lot easier to sell it.

So, if you happen to notice that cheap funky awful looking CAL or Pearson you were thinking about buying magically reappears looking tidier and sprightly for a few thousand dollars more, you might want to keep in mind that you could have bought it for a lot less and a couple of days cleaning.

For those folks who have a boat for sale... I suspect there's a lesson to be learned here as well.


Tuesday, January 5, 2016

about sustainability...

A reader mentioned something the other day and it's been buzzing around in the back of my mind ever since...

"For most, cruising IS unsustainable both monetarily and psychologically."

As it happens, I have to admit that he's right but the proviso "For most" means there are exceptions and, if you're reading VolksCruiser, there's a goodly chance that you may be just such an exception.

Exceptional, some might say.

Anyone can buy a cheap boat, fix it up, and sail off into the sunset and prosper until the boat starts needing repairs, you run into unexpected expenses, and the money runs out. Fact of the matter is, that's pretty much the whole standard cruising plan most folk seem to run with and, if you're only interested in cruising short-term, it's not a bad plan at all. On the other hand, it's a pretty piss-poor plan for the long-term.

Cruising as a sustainable lifestyle, at best, is problematic...

Which, I suspect is why so very few people actually talk or write about it in any depth because it's a difficult subject and oh-so-much-easier to talk or write about boat designs, cunning plans to fix up a boat on a budget, and other interesting but needful nautical minutiae. Truth be told, I think most writers of a nautical bent (myself included) tend to leave the details of how to go about cruising on a low budget in a sustainable manner for the cruiser to sort out for themselves.

Not unlike the old problem solving technique favored by certain designers of boats where they just leave out the parts they can't figure out hoping the builder will sort it out once they arrive at that stage of construction.

So, yeah, sustainability is problematic but we really do need to deal with it in a better way than most of us do as a rule.

We need to talk about it more...

We need to share information...

We need to do something about the negative social stigma that results in trying to live a sustainable non-consumerist life on a planet with finite resources and too frelling many people...

And...

We need to do it sooner rather than later.

Which, if you will, is a sorta/kinda manifesto regarding what a lot of VolksCruiser is going to be about in this 2016 thingy and it might not be for the faint of heart.

More soon come.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Saturday, January 2, 2016

More on boat value or what the frell is a boat really worth anyway?

While there are lots and lots of good boat deals about, it would not be amiss to mention that the used market is a little nuts...

Well, actually it's just plain batshit crazy!

So, here's two nearly identical Columbia 26's...



One's, apparently in better shape than the other but they are both in what I'd call medium condition. Which means that you'd want to spend some time fixing them up but nothing drastic or too expensive.

They are, however, priced quite differently... The asking price on one is pretty much what you might expect at  $3,800. while the other is going at $15,500.

Really! Can you spell B-U-G-F-U-C-K-C-R-A-Z-Y?

It gets even stranger when it's pretty obvious that the cheaper one is a lot nicer...

So, what should a Columbia 26 actually cost?

A while back I was interested in buying a C26 to use as a VolksCruiser crash test dummy and my research came to the conclusion that a near perfect well-equipped and turnkey example was worth somewhere between $5K and $6K. So the $3.8K asking price for the one Columbia is about right (that said, do keep in mind that an asking price is just that so you should be able to get a boat for less and sometimes a LOT LESS). As for the other C26 it's obviously nuts but it is needful to keep in mind that boats like this one seriously distort the market and cloud the true value of all of the boats of the same type.

The moral of all this is to do your homework and NEVER let price be your guide to the quality of a given boat...