On Feb 12, 5:48 pm, "Frogwatch" wrote:
Reading about Skip and Lydia' Gundlatch's misadventure gets me
pondering all I have heard about people who spend years building a
boat or saving for casting off only to go a little ways and finding it
just doesnt work for them. It just seems like a shame to spend so
much time only to have it all go to hell. Maybe it is better to not
put it all into that boat but to make her simple and smaller so that
if she gets wrecked or otherwise doesnt work out it isnt such a blow.
I wonder what the statistics are on what fraction of people who do
this sort of thing have it work out.
My personal strastegy is that my own boat is sorta small but just
large enough for me to cross the Gulf in good weather (28'). She is
long ago paid for and isnt a modern beauty but she works well. I have
no complicated stuff, no shorepower, no marine head, no chart plotter,
nothing fancy at all.
I was with you until you got to the no marine head part ;-)
I'm guessing you are a singlehandler....
What if you want to go farther than just the bahamas, what if you need
more tankage (your boat carries about 20 gals of water?), what if you
are going
to live on this boat for years?? What if you don't want to get a
divorce?
That being said, a 40+ footer, while inviting at dock, is a bear under
storm
conditions if not reefed early enough.
Ok, smaller can be better (really ... stop laughing... I'm being
serious)
but there is a point where it can be too small.
Tom