a few words on my anti-cat/tri agenda....

The other day I received an email from a reader who took exception with my "buy old boats and rehab" bias and went on to suggest that more posts be about building new boats of the VolksCruiserish ilk. He then went on to say that it would be even better if I concentrated on multihulls...


Houston we have a problem!


Actually we have a bunch of problems trying to build a multihull VolksCruiser. For starters, there are almost no designers of multihulls designing cats or tris for folks on a budget. Add to that the simple fact that multihulls, by their very nature, demand higher spec'd and lighter materials which are a LOT more expensive.


Which is not to say that someone can't build a frugal cat or tri but it is still going to be a great deal more expensive to build than a monohull of the same seaworthiness, livability, and payload. For the record, in today's economy, you can buy a used monohull in good shape for less than you can build one (in most cases). On the other hand, a good fixer-upper monohull will cost a fraction of a new build or used monohull.


So, the reason I mostly tend to point people on a frugal budget towards good rehabbable designs that you can find for cheap is not because I have an anti-cat or tri agenda but simply that for cats and tris in the current state of things, there are just bugger all choices if you want to go to sea and cruise on a budget.


Truth be told, I'd really like my next boat to be a catamaran and I can no longer keep track of the number of hours I've spent going over and costing out various study plans only to find that either they weren't up to real cruising or simply too expensive to build for what they provide.


Now, if any aspiring multihull designers care to send me some details of VolksCruiserish cat or tri designs they have in their back pocket that can be built on a blue-collar budget without acquiring crippling debt in the process, I'm all ears. What's more, I'll be happy to do more posts on VolksCruiser about cats/tris and tell as many folks I can about such beasts...


Hell, I might even build one...

Because quite a few people just asked what a Centaur costs...

Just a quick look at some Westerly Centaurs for sale show me an average asking price of $9199. That said, no one really ever pays asking price for a boat...

So, let's just peg the real world price (in the US of A) at somewhere around $7600 or about $1.14 a pound.

Pretty much says it all...

Small & simple...

Yann Quenet shows us how it's done...

Kinda makes all sorts of sense.

Just a couple of boats in an anchorage...

A while back, a guy I knew dropped me a line from Ushuaia down at the tip of South America and he was just a little bit perturbed. As it happens, the reason for his upset is that the boat anchored next to him was a Westerly Centaur, a 26-foot bilge keeled "family" cruiser, not unlike this one (though I expect without the bikini clad helmswoman)

My friend, on the other hand, had a big go-anywhere serious cruiser by Garcia. A very expensive boat that had been designed just for cruising such out of the way serious places like the tip of South America and the lower latitudes. So, to find he was sharing an anchorage with such a humbly-pedigreed design had him all kinds of out-of-sorts.

Made worse, I suspect, when the elderly couple rowed over to bring him some freshly-made scones and to compare notes about their respective voyages as they'd both come from the same neck of the woods and sailed, more or less, the same voyage to find themselves together in that same particular harbor...

Fact is, he mentioned there were a lot of "surprisingly" small modest boats doing the Horn that year almost all with little fanfare and precious little man-against-sea posturing.

Which just goes to show that pretty much anywhere you go there will be small boats of a VolksCruiserish sort scadalizing the anchorage.

Some seriously good advice...

some food for thought...

the big problem...

There's a guy who writes from time to time wanting my opinion on various boats he's considering and, to be honest, I quite look forward to his emails because he has a good eye for boats but avoids being stuck in a rut. You might say he's all over the place and not the same old same sort of guy.

Sadly he's a rarity.

Most folk who write on a regular basis tend to ask about variations of the same boat (like my opinion on the Westsail vs the Bristol Channel Cutter). They're not interested in anything outside a certain type and mainly seem to want to know which (insert boat type here) is the best. Truth is, I don't do best (it being a consumerist con and all). I often find myself wondering just why these people keep writing me since I'm obviously not answering their questions. Or maybe to be more precise, I'm not giving them the sort of answer they want me to give.

That said, I really do enjoy the mail because it keeps me grounded in to other people's viewpoints, needs, and problems navigating the whole get a boat and sail off into the sunset gig. Which sorta/kinda leads me to the big problem almost everybody seems to have...

Mission creep.

Case in point, a guy started writing me about the time I was doing posts on the Columbia 26. He liked the fact that the Columbia 26 (there was one local to him in good shape for sale at $3.5K) was cheap and seemed to be able to do everything he thought needful for his girlfriend and him to go off sailing to Mexico for a year to see if they actually wanted to do the whole cruising gig.

A few mails later he mentioned he'd seen a CAL 29 and wondered if the extra money spent would be worthwhile and make for a better experience. The difference was about an extra $1K for the CAL and in his mind the big advantage was the fact that the CAL had an inboard motor (an Atomic4).

Of course, now that he'd upped the ante to a twenty-nine foot boat and decided he really needed an inboard engine, he began to cast his net a little wider and decided that as long as he was getting a boat with an inboard engine he really should go that little bit more and get one with a diesel engine and that, just maybe, a 34-36 foot boat might be better than the CAL 29.

Which is how you get from wanting to spend under $5K for a boat to go cruising next year to finding yourself shopping for boats with a $35-40K pricetag and a five-year plan to go cruising in 2020.

Mission creep. It's a relentess monster.

As for the guy who was interested in buying the Columbia 26?  Just the other day he wrote to ask me my opinion of several forty-foot boats...

So it does go...

and because simple really is simple...

Over at TriloBoat Talk, Dave Z has a must read post that anyone contemplating building or rehabbing a cruising boat should read...

I'll wait.

I'll go against the prevailing wisdom and point out that it's really pretty easy to build or rehab a boat and well within the abilities of anyone who can chew gum and walk at the same time. Really it's all simple DIY kind of stuff. Just a whole lot of it.

The problems most people run into are self-induced of the making-a-simple-thing-complicated sort.

Take this boat for example...

Tad Robert's Laura Cove 28

Or, this one...

Yann Quenet's SKROWL 900

And then there's this one...

Dave Z's TriloBoat

They are all pretty cool boats and should not cost you any more than $15K to build or take any longer than six months of fairly simple but industrious work. All you have to do is follow the plans and simple directions.

The only reason it would cost you more or take longer would be self-inflicted and has nothing to do with the designs, boatbuilding, or the relative weight of air in your chosen location.

A simple boat, simple skill set, and the ability to complete simple tasks in a timely manner is all you need.

The only thing holding you back is, well, you...

dollars and cents...

Have you ever noticed the difference in reaction you get when you talk about how little you spend on boat stuff rather than how much? I don't know about you but the obsession with money as a measure of utility, value, or quality really gets up my nose...

On the other side of the coin, I find the cheap is better thought process just as irksome because there are a lot of crap derelicts-waiting-to-happen boats floating about. So, just because you find a dirt cheap boat does not make it a VolksCruiser or mean you should buy it.

A VolksCruiser is not simply about being cheap it's about being seaworthy, simple, affordable, and sustainable. Trust me there's a big difference.

A couple of days back someone wrote to point out a great deal (less than $2K) on an Ericson 27 and it appeared to be in very good shape... The appeal of the boat was not that it was cheap but because the boat was a good design in great shape and cheap.

The Ericson 27 which ranges normally between $5K to $13K is a well built little boat which is very much a VolksCruiser as it stands. But, it is a VolkCruiser because it is a good affordable boat that will do the job and not just because it's cheap.

That said, getting a good boat for less is no bad thing either...

about those moorings...

Tom Cunliffe on anchoring and suchlike...