Sailing Contradictions
Saturday morning. Here we go,
hell or high water, I WILL finish this weekend with a list of boats that might
suit my purpose. Not ‘actual’ boats, but ‘makes or models’, then I can start to
look for actual boats within my price range.
I have been pleasantly
distracted and excited by an email I received this morning -an email of
encouragement and advice. I won’t mention this chap’s name, although I hope he’ll
click on the ‘follower’ button and publish his advice to me on the ‘comments’
so that others can read it.
I have an issue with Google’s
use of the term ‘followers’ and I suspect it discourages people from signing up
as a ‘follower’. Sailing people tend to be gregarious and generous of spirit,
but they are often strong individualists with mildly anarchic tendencies who
stand outside the herd, they would not describe themselves as ‘followers’ of
anyone. (long may this be the case!)
I’m not able to change Google
terminology, but I can try to define it in terms that we here may find more
acceptable. Here goes:
Click the follower sign: - to encourage me
to keep up this quest and as a way of linking yourself with like minded
individuals. Writing is about communication, and communication should be (at least) a two way process.
AND IN RETURN
We will consider ourselves as
free independent skippers, captains of our own vessels, partners, comrades,
co-conspirators, freethinking individuals of equal status, with a common
interest – anything but followers!
Enough of this rant (except
to say thank you to the author of the email) now I know I’m not alone in this
endeavour and my drive for real freedom at the cost of lower income isn’t an
irrational personal insanity!
His advice, by the way, was
to look to the USA for inexpensive vessels. Prices there seem much lower than
UK.
Seaward
Hi there, I took your advice and joined your site. I'm not really au fait with these blogs so this is all a new experience for me.
ReplyDeleteI too have been thinking about the concept of an ideal boat, though this is mainly theoretical for me as I have little sailing experience. I got a day skipper qualification last year, already forgotten most of it and had ownership of three small boats, a dragonfly a 18 ft day sailer with 3 berths, made of plywood, a westerly nomad, very stable and not much fun to sail unless there is good wind strength, and currently own a small open drascombe type boat. I live in Bath and enjoyed sailing around Lawrenny in west Wales last year.
I read an interesting and very amusing book whose theme was an ideal sailing boat, called up the creek , written by a chap called Tony James, himself a journalist. I have always considered wooden boats but after reading this book I have decided to put them to the bottom of my list. Read this book, and you will see what I mean.
The other thing that has come to my mind is that with sailing something always seems to go wrong and I know that after I'm out for a while I always fancy getting back quickly so I fancy something stable with a reasonable turn of speed. For this reason I have considered catamarans. I had the opportunity of looking around a home built woods catamaran and was impressed by the size, though these are not cheap. Wharram designed a lot of these and they get a big press, but up close there is no real protection from th elements on deck on the more affordable models. The was a very interesting blog that I followed last year by a chap sailing a 21 ft tiki wharram cat who was second in the jester challenge across the atlantic. However I think you need something with more living space if you are going to spend extended time on it. Cats point very badly into wind but their sisters trimarans can sail most closer into the wind and also enjoy a reasonable turn of speed. You don't see a lot of these on the secondhand market. An interesting website that markets cats and tri is Scott browns multihulls.
The other option and I have not really examined this in much detail is to import one from the us. I know that there is a large amount of duty on the purchase price. However the prices over there are rock bottom to begin with. The thing hat would need some research would bethe container price . One could also get it container ed to a cruising ground that you were interested in, ie Greek islands.
My day skipper instructor is a retired law lecturr who on retire ment bought himself a 50 footer for about 70k. This is a serious boat and he has had it all over Europe. I will post some of his suggestions in another email as I'm aware that this one has become like war and peace already. Finally there is a group called the small boat forum where a link to this blog was created. You may want to have a look at that as there are a lot of interesting files re small boats and DIY articles. Some of the contributors are really skilled and there is always a lively exchange of views.