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Perfect cruiser
Unlike keyboard cruisers like Boobsprit, I actually sail a lot and do a
lot of cruising. As far as I am concerned, I live in a cruising paradise with over 130 miles of wilderness shoreline to explore in the North Florida Big Bend area. I have my choice of deserted barrier islands, crystal clear springs bubbling up into the salt water, anchorages where I can simultaneously see bald eagles, alligators and swarms of Monarch Butterflies flying across the Gulf to Mexico, flats where I can snorkel for scallops and tiny fishing communities with great redneck bars. When unfortunates like Boobs are hauling their boats for the winter, cruising season is starting for me. When they are FINALLY putting their boats in the water, I am anchoring near the cold springs and swimming cuz there's no wind in the summer. In short, I can sail far more than unfortunates like Cap'n Boobs so I don't need a garish Cheap French Whore of a boat to have fun. Our coastline is unusual in that for much of it, if you can see the shore, any boat with more than 4' draft would be aground. For over 100 miles to the east of here, there are only two places accessible to a draft over 4', thus Boobs boat with a draft of nearly 5' would be useful only as a fixed navigational marker. With a coastline like this, what is needed is a shoal draft boat that can also sail well. Since such a boat exploring the tiny creeks and bayous will run aground many times in a cruise, it must be able to take it. For this reason I also decided my boat must also have encapsulated ballast and NOT external ballast. With external ballast, the large number of groundings would eventually loosen the keel-hull joint whereas the soft groundings on sand and oyster bars will not harm a hull with encapsulated ballast. The 28' S2 with 3'10" draft and encapsulated ballast seemed perfect.. Even better, S2 obviously intended for her to be sailed single handed (which I do a lot) way back in 1981 when she was built because all sail controls lead right to where they can be reached by the helmsman. Something Boobs could not find out by reading the PS review of the S2 8.5M is that she has rigging considerably more robust than other boats her size giving her a very strong rig, a necessity for all those groundings. Last year I replaced ALL of her standing rigging and running rigging and lifelines and her old 6.5 hp Yanmar diesel (got me a 13 hp 2GM) and bought new sails and a CDI furler to turn her into the perfect coastal cruising machine. Of course, you ask, "How can anyone run aground that much". Around here the charts are simply wrong due to rearrangements of the coast by hurricanes, furthermore, the rare aids to navigation seem to have been placed with malicious intent as they are pure fantasy. Even worse, I boldly go where no sailboat is supposed to go giving a probability over 75% we will go aground on any outing. But you ask "Can a boat with shoal draft cross big water" and the answer is how you define big. I have gone back and forth across the Gulf from here to Sarasota many times which puts us an average of 50 miles off shore in the middle of the trip (a 160 mile trip). She seems to handle this quite well. Is she fast? On a recent trip from Clearwater to Shell Pt, a distance of 130 miles straight across, it took only 28 hours, pretty good for a 28' sailboat. This afternoon, on a beam reach in 18 kts of wind, the GPS said 7.0-7.1 kts for over 20 minutes. Is she comfortable? I am unable to assess this as I have spent so much of my life camping on the ground or sleeping under bizarre conditions on caving trips ANYTHING with a dry bunk is nice. When I consider her qualities further in light of my plans, she is the perfect Bahamas boat with a 3'10" draft and is even better for the Keys. She can transit the Okeechobee Waterway without dropping her mast because she just fits under the fixed railroad bridge. Planning to sail to the very shallow coastline of Belize and that area, she is even better suited than almost anything else. In short, I now have the perfect cruising machine while poor Boobs can only sit at the dock bragging about his boat and doing virtual cruising. |
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