Musing on Buying Boats and lost dreams

[Captain Smollett]

One of the things that bugs me personally about the meme "good cruising boat" is that often, especially when this is a "popular" boat, it either simply is false or at least often false for the kind of cruising a sailor or couple plans.

Here in the Gaelic Sea home, we like to often repeat "Form Follows Function."  There is no one boat to "rule them all," as current pop culture seems to seek in, well, everything.  There is not one single, right boat for all boating situations.

It seems obvious, especially to those of us here at sailfar who seem to ponder this stuff quite a bit.  What makes a "good boat" can only be defined after stating..."good for what."

I bring this up because I was once again recently reminded of a disturbing trend.  It has a few variants, but goes something like this:

(1) Couple wants to cruise (however that is defined), and starts researching boats.

(2) In many, many cases, they arrive at a "good boat" list that is based on one or more of: (a) boats they see advertised in SAIL or Cruising World or some such magazine or we site, (b) they listen to others who have formed their own "good boat" list from the same sources.

Often, such lists are compiled "out of purpose" or "out of function" for the type of cruising they want to do, but they may lack the experience or cold objectivity required to make these distinctions.

(3) A boat is purchased, used "out of purpose," and the experience is miserable enough that the cruise is abandoned, the boat sold, and it chalked up to "well we tried, but it wasn't for us."

A similar example is that I remember reading of a couple that employed a horrible storm tactic in severe weather and subsequently damaged the boat, had a miserable experience and upon reaching port, promptly put the boat up for sale, bought plane tickets home and gave up.

This morning I ran across a nice quote by canoe / paddling author Slim Ray that captured the essence of "losing the dream" even with canoe purchases, so this is not limited to sailing and cruising.

Ray's words, from The Canoe Handbook, published in 1992:

A temptation at the outset is often to buy some ragged-out piece of junk. I can get it cheap, so the thinking goes, and therefore if I decide I don't like it, or don't like canoeing, I won't have that much tied up in it.  Usually, this is a mistake. You may end up with something so totally unsuitable that you'll sour on the sport without having really given it a chance.  Suppose you buy some nice, stable barge.  It won't turn over, sure, but by the end of the day, after having tried in vain to keep up with your friends, you're whipped and thinking that canoeing is not for you.  But it was cheap, right?

{my emphasis added}

What Ray is saying here applies not just to canoes, but also strongly aligns with sailing and cruising.  To emphasize that he's not just talking about "price," he goes on:

The other extreme is to buy a hot boat right away.  This might be a racer, a smoking pistol of a freestyle boat, or the very latest whitewater wonder.  The theory here is that since you'll never outgrow the boat, you'll have saved yourself the cost of a beginner boat.  And it does look cool on top of your car.  All true, but you may never learn to paddle it at all.  You may instead spend many frustrating hours going in circles or investigating the bottoms of rivers and ponds, only to conclude that snorkeling might be your sport of choice after all.

Let's paraphrase Ray's words to adapt them to sailing and cruising.  For example,

"You may buy a hot, modern, popular 'blue water boat.'  She's fast and points high so she will win club races.  But, you may never learn to sail properly at all; the upwind groove may be too tight for you to trim for and hold an upwind course when not in 'ideal sailing conditions.'  She may pound in a seaway and make conditions seem worse than they are.  She may be spacious and comfortable at the dock, but lack seakeeping ability when single handed."

There are many ways to slice this, of course. 

The point is, I guess....I do wish (for their sake in finding their dreams) people would put more thought into WHAT BOAT they are buying then many seem to, and that they would look coldly and objectively at what trade-offs have been made in a particular design.

That's not to say, "go now with the boat you have" is bad or wrong...I guess distilling it further, I mean it's important to understand limitations and compromises, work with them to enjoy the activity and not fight against them to end up hating it.

Mid week musing mode off...

[jotruk]

I have a friend that insists that the only way you can go cruising is on a 39+ footer. I think that he has influenced my wife on this because she is very hesitant now on going on our 27 footer.

[CharlieJ]

I have a friend that insists that the only way you can go cruising is on a 39+ footer. I think that he has influenced my wife on this because she is very hesitant now on going on our 27 footer.

Well, tell her he's just plain wrong. Here's my  25 footer, after some 2 years, (and after cruising the Bahamas) anchored in Beaufort SC.

Edited to add-

of course, at this point in time, she'd only crossed the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf Stream twice, Tongue of the Ocean twice, Great Bahamas Bank twice.

Can't do that in a 25 footer right? Wrong!!  ;)

[Crazer]

I think there's a lot to this, but it's interesting to note that it's not just the people who insist on a 40+ footer with a racer's performance and all the bells and whistles that are guilty of this. A lot of people buy old "fixer uppers" because they are reputed to be capable, but cheap bluewater vessels. They buy otherwise worthy boats (Bristols, Pearsons, Cape Dorys) for a song, drag them home and then lose interest after a couple of years of slaving away at cracked gelcoat, soft decks and corroded metal. Or worse, never get started because they don't know how. There's sort of a mythology built up around the old "classic plastics" that is not entirely undeserved, but does a lot to disguise the realities of owning an old boat. Furthermore, that mythology has gone as far as to include not just the quality of the design but the quality of the construction. Yeah, the NAs drew some fine boats, but a lot of the coveted Pearsons were of middling quality at best. Just today I discovered the fairlead I had used last summer for my mooring line was on the edge of getting ripped right out the toe rail because it wasn't bolted through properly when the boat was built. There's a lot to be said for old boats, but you have to realize what you're getting into.

[Frank]

Being honest with yourself on how/where you will actually use the boat is a must. The wrong boat can take many forms. A fast modern design that will pound you offshore if that is what you do is as bad as a heavy displacement-deep keel boat gunkholing the shallows of the Bahamas. Both will frustrate you in a hurry. I know some will say that you can cruise the Bahamas with 6ft+ draft...and you can. Others may say you can make long offshore passages on a light weight "first 30"...and they are also correct. In both cases I say "why".   My 2 cents (worth .5 cent when adj. for inflation) is to get the smallest, shallowest possible draft boat that will honestly suit your actual usage. Honesty with yourself is the key.
Edited for clarity...
I know I'll only be sailing the Florida Keys and Bahamas. A step over to Cuba at some point may happen. All these are short hops that can easily be done safely with a good weather window. It makes no sence for me to get a cruiser built for a circumnavigation.
Most boats I've sailed to Bahamas would not be well suited to continue through the islands further south. My same 25fter that was great on the Bahamas bank would be scary sailing to Aruba. Really scary crossing the Pacific.
Guess I'm just trying to say..."choose wisely"

[Captain Smollett]

Frank,

Therein lies the problem as I have observed it.  That is, this is just my own observation of people I've met and read about.  I don't claim this is some sort of 'scientific' analysis of properly collected data...etc.

With that disclaimer, my observation is that a lot of cruisers, would-be cruisers, don't SEEM to get that basic point you state.  A good boat for rounding the horn may not be a good boat for the Bahamas, and many other examples.

Too often, the thinking seems to be..."a boat."  "I have a boat."  "I want a boat."  Etc, like that.  The thinking seems to me to be "a boat" is just "a boat."

And that, I fear, is where a lot of dreams die.  My children and I were talking about this just yesterday.  The example I thought to give was "You would not buy a passenger car to pull a plow in the field and you would not try to use a farm tractor for a 20 mile daily commute."

But, for some reason, this slips through the thinking (or more often slips through) on boats, especially sailors.  Maybe it's regional?  I don't know.  Maybe in other locations, folks make more rational boat purchasing decisions.

Rational in this instance refers to "best tool for the job."

I love my Alberg 30.  I think the design is a great boat for what I want to do.  A few years ago, I thought about various chartering business ideas.  These ideas ran the gamut.  It did not take long for me to figure out that even though I love the boat, this model would NOT make a good "charter" boat.

A lot of the things that I personally 'hate' about some other boat designs, however, would make a good charter around here.  For that use, accommodations may well exceed raw seaworthiness on the priority scale.  A hammer is not a pipe wrench, and an A-30 is not a good customer comfort oriented charter boat.

The problem lies, then, in my mind, when the comfort oriented 'charter boat' is tasked to do what other designs may well do better.  Someone charters a certain boat in the VI, for example, then gets a hankering for a circumnavigation, and what do they (all too often) do?  Go buy the same model.

But...the use profile has changed.  Now we are trying to use a pipe wrench to hammer in a nail.  As you said...will it work?  Maybe.  Is it the best?  Absolutely not.

Could its shortcomings lead to an abandoned dream?  You betcha.  There have been magazine articles on 'lost dreams' where the failures of the boat were clearly at least partly to blame.

But what I don't see (often enough) is the question..."Could a better boat possibly led to a more favorable outcome?"  No, that question is not asked.  The problem is always...the weather, the seas, or fatalistically...these things just happen.

I mean, after all, "It was a good boat for VI charter, it's advertised in all the magazines, it must be a good boat for crossing the Indian Ocean, right?"

[CharlieJ]

Last year I took a 21 footer, on a trailer, on a driving tour/cruise of Florida. Had a ball- 3600 miles in 5 weeks, sailed three different areas.

Now I have Tehani. Here to Pensacola? Probably 12 days. She doesn't move as fast as that trailer boat  does.

But I'd never even dream of trying to do in the 21 footer, the things I do without much concern in Tehani.

Different boats for different sailing. Is one better? Nope, each suits it's purpose. But for long term sailing, the comfort of Tehani outweighs the features of Necessity. To me.

I'd have loved to keep both. Then I could be on the Chesapeake for a couple of weeks, in three days, instead of a couple months, and done long term trips on the other. But Tehani is much more comfortable. But I can't maintain both to the standards I set, so I had to choose. The one I kept is a lot more long legged on her own bottom than the other. She suits what I want to do more than Necessity did.

Matter of choosing the hammer, or the wrench. But I really don't know which of those I kept ;D ;D

[jotruk]

Let me add something to my missive above, My friend was pushing me to purchase a boat other that the Hunter 27. He insists that it would not be capable of more than bay or icw sailing. According to him the Hunter is a piss poor boat at best. I have purchased a 24' San Juan, this boat I got for a song and plan on saleing It as soon as I can, now he is trying to convince me that the San Juan is a much better boat that the Hunter. I keep telling him that the hunter is paid for and I like the boat(I guess that is the biggest thing) and plan on keeping it.

[Captain Smollett]

Let me add something to my missive above, My friend was pushing me to purchase a boat other that the Hunter 27. He insists that it would not be capable of more than bay or icw sailing. According to him the Hunter is a piss poor boat at best. I have purchased a 24' San Juan, this boat I got for a song and plan on saleing It as soon as I can, now he is trying to convince me that the San Juan is a much better boat that the Hunter. I keep telling him that the hunter is paid for and I like the boat(I guess that is the biggest thing) and plan on keeping it.

Piss poor at best, huh?

Your friend certainly has some interesting ideas.

The older Hunters like yours have MUCH better design numbers than the newer ones...either of the newer incarnations.  If you look at CSR for example, Hunter steadily decreased "stability" with each new model design (per LOA).

The SJ 24's are indeed nice boats...for what they are designed to do.  They are NOT considered "blue water boats," certainly no more than the Hunter I'd guess.  I sure would like to know what your friend's criteria are for saying the SJ24 is a "better boat" than the Hunter.

(I'm not saying he's wrong necessarily...it's all about use.  But, if you are talking about sailing to Bermuda from the US East Coast, I'd wonder at his comment for sure).

If you can stand the high noise to signal ratio (and high ratio of naysayers), there are some interesting comments here:

http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?showtopic=149798

Particularly relevant to this thread...

http://forums.sailinganarchy.com/index.php?s=0694edca3f4470cb74a1a847a4e46d7e&showtopic=149798#entry4266220

Where in the dude sold the boat after using it "out of purpose."

[jotruk]

Thanks Capt. for the input. I have no intention of keeping the sj24. It is for sale and can't wait to get read of it. it is listed on sail Texas if anyone is interested.

[Jim_ME]

I'd have loved to keep both. Then I could be on the Chesapeake for a couple of weeks, in three days, instead of a couple months...But I can't maintain both to the standards I set, so I had to choose.

Yes...some of us were hoping that you could keep both, too. You're pretty handy at maintenance... Maybe mostly because it would make it more likely that you would get over to our areas with a trailer sailer...such as the Chesapeake Bay (as you say), or even up to Maine. Reports of our Arctic climate are exaggerated--at least in summer/fall! (John can confirm this from his visit. No frostbite injury reported so far...)  ;)