What, old folks have greater credibility, just because of longevity?


Peter Wiley wrote:
Nope, the fact that he's been sailing, designing & building boats
longer than most of us have been alive, let alone sailing.

Agreed. Respect for elders is actually a very positive value... usually an Oriental
stereotype, but our culture certainly has it too.


... I have a set of building plans for a Saugeen Witch,

Excellent boat. I have a booklet on her that my father got from Tom Colvin decades ago.

.... all I
lack is the time & shed to build it and I'm working on the shed. I
don't own or want to own a fin keel cruiser/racer or racer/cruiser. In
the future I may change my mind - I'm not hampered by consistency.
Nothing to do with their sailing performance either, more to do with
working on them/hauling without a good marine railway and sailing in
thin water. Like everything else made, different styles of boat have
different mixes of strengths & weaknesses - there is rarely any
'better' or 'worse' until you define the intended use.

Definitely agreed, and this is something that most people gloss over (or ignore
completely).

The reason why so many people have fin-keel racer/cruisers is not out of conscious choice,
but rather because they have have been mass produced for two generations now. They are
cheap and plentiful and familiar. Most of them also suffer from most of the ills of any
product intended for mass consumption.

Disregarding the marketing blitzes associated with one brand or another, some of them are
still quite good boats. There are some things that none of them will ever do, like stand
up on their own on a tidal grid for bottom work, or go to windward against a chop without
loud thumps & crashes, or have the easy motion of a heavy full keeler (although some of
the wing keels damp motion in heave & pitch nicely).

Needless to say, like some other mass-produced items, some fin-keel racer/cruisers are
total sacks of ****, yet were marketed successfully anyway. Some were made from molds of
racing designs that were "successful" due to some quirk in rating rules, not because they
sailed well. I think this is why so many discerning sailors, folks who are knowledgable of
a wider range of sailing craft, hold their noses at the very suggestion of fin keels or
the term "racer/cruiser." But it's not a valid endictment against the whole genre (BTW
Peter I don't mean to accuse you of this, I'm just waxing philosophical over 2nd cup of
coffee).




BTW the debate wasn't whether a boat can be balanced by sail (at which a long keeled
schooner would excel), but whether it could do so with the helm swinging free, a more
difficult proposition.

Yeah, Doug, I caught that.

OK, wasn't sure. I missed it first time around. My first thought was "WTF would anybody do
that?!?" then the slower memory cells kicked in and I remembered a few times I had done
it.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King