Sailing is about beauty. If you don't get that you miss the whole point
of sailing as a recreational activity. We buy a boat for no practical
reason. Oh, we can defend the sailboat with many arguments. A person or
family does need an outlet, a way to relax one's mind, to bring friends
and family closer. But there are less expensive ways to do that than
owning a yacht. And that brings us back to beauty. Picture a sailboat
in your mind; a long slender crescent moon topped with an impossibly
large triangle of cloth, a floating pendulum of grace designed to
harness the power of the wind. It's quite an amazing thing really. The
experience, as a boat heels over in that first gust of wind, sails
powering up, the dramatic effort as tons of hull balances and slices
through the water, is nothing less than orgasmic.
Sailing isn't about speed. It isn't about comfort and sure as hell
isn't about how far you sail. You could spend a lifetime sailing on a
small lake and never need anything more. Or you could sail across an
ocean. It's all the same as it all brings you back to that first magic
moment. The rest, all the rest are only details.
If you want to get there faster, buy a speedboat. If you don't like the
heeling, buy a trawler. The beauty of sailing is in the inefficiency of
it all in a world that forces us to be efficient, the impractically in
a life that demands practicality. Trying to force practicality onto a
sailing vessel is like adding a trailer to a Jaguar E Type, or adding a
hull and taking away the heeling and beauty of a sailboat.
So...two all the aspiring dreamers out the Stay away from a boat
like Jeff's. It's an abomination. It's ugly plain and simple. Want to
be practical? Buy a minivan, but don't tarnish a dream of sailing with
a boat that looks and sails like one. Buy a sailboat that fits your
dream, that picture in your mind. It can be a Catalina 30 or a Rhodes
19 or a lavish Sweden 39. The joys of a keelboat are boundless. There
are SUV's that are faster than a Miata, but no one seeking a sportscar
would trade that feeling for extra seats....except maybe Jeff.

RB
35s5
NY