AngusMcDoon
Well-Known Member
I started on dinghies then moved on to bigger boats. I was incompetent then. I'm still incompetent now. Whatever boat size, it doesn't seem to have helped me.
A Capable Family Cruiser
- Thread starter Stemar
- Start date
Tranona
Well-Known Member
It was 1987 (time flies!) .I would have enjoyed reading your account of your ‘channel cruise’ .
Sadly I don’t think that YBW have yet to put up a digital archive that is readily accessible?
I have always written “voyage from and towards” at the start of the log rather than “ voyage to..” Becsuse we never really know do we?
The adventures start when the passage planning plan hits the first obstruction.
I am going to agree to differ on almost every other point that you make though.
Engines and props fail with monotonous regularity. And you yourself have demonstrated that resourcefulness and patience and canny ‘can do’ are a viable alternative to plug and play sailing and calling up the marine breakdown rescue services at the first blown fuse or jammed halyard or clogged filter or net wrap.
I am glad your marriage survived The Learning Curve and the pontoon jumps
Engines and props do not fail anywhere as near as often as you imagine - at least statistically. there are of course plenty of reports like mine in the press and club bars because they are rare events that can be dramatic. However they are not typical and ignore the vast majority of uneventful cruises which get no attention. I spent a fair amount of my career involved in those sorts of products and if you listened to the constant stream of stories I heard from visitors to my stand at boat shows you might wonder why anybody would ever go cruising in a small boat.
Still married 57 years and continued sailing together happily once we bought the 37' Bavaria. Once the children had gone the fun of roughing it in the 26' went with them and I continued single handed with that.
Chiara’s slave
Well-Known Member
I doubt that
But I certainly wouldn’t recommend your boat, or mine, to someone who’d never sailed a small boat, to appreciate the consequences of a cock up. Remote though that possibility is on a Dragonfly. For 99.9% of the sailing population, the change of underwear comes noticeably before actual danger.
zoidberg
Well-Known Member
We were warned about this several thousand years ago - i.e. Odysseus and the Sirens.
'If Carlsberg entrapped passing sailors....'
Chiara’s slave
Well-Known Member
I thought it did.
Blueboatman
Well-Known Member
Stemar
Well-Known Member
Absolutely - just ask Shane Acton, though I doubt many people would call Shrimpy (a Caprice 18) a capable family cruiser
Been there, did that. All part of the adventure
Sometimes those dastardly cunning sirens wave cold condensation dripping beer bottles at passing sailors too! Damn
oldmanofthehills
Well-Known Member
Most young families can barely afford a rowing boat after they have bought the essential as house car and food
Yachts much beyond 32 secondhand are in the luxury class and few parents own them until children are adult - which is not what is meant by family cruising
PS it’s not virtuous to be rich, it’s convenient
Yachts much beyond 32 secondhand are in the luxury class and few parents own them until children are adult - which is not what is meant by family cruising
PS it’s not virtuous to be rich, it’s convenient
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zoidberg
Well-Known Member
Somebody wrote "Go small, go simple, go now."
Somebody else will be along to tell me who it was ( but I know! )
Somebody else will be along to tell me who it was ( but I know! )
johnalison
Well-Known Member
That might well be the case to you and me, but it is not the impression you would get from reading YM. From what I can see, if you read Yachting World, a family cruiser would be more like 50’.
xyachtdave
Well-Known Member
To be fair to Yachting World nobody buys it for articles about small affordable boats!
johnalison
Well-Known Member
My father, who enjoyed sailing and always dreamed of having a yacht, took YW back in the ‘50s. I would see it sometimes and enjoy trying to work out what a boat would be like from the line plans. One totally irrelevant memory - a cartoon of a gaff-rigged YW Cadet, necessitated by the need to make room for a five-figure number once the 10,000 mark was passed.
Blueboatman
Well-Known Member
I did that
Though it felt subversive or even self sabotaging in terms of housing, career, social life ( etc etc)
Best thing I ever did
In many ways, although I find the bras- with -everything and mock dramas irritating, I take my hat off to the younger YouTube content makers. Those setting off on their own, s/h old boat/new experience adventures on the ocean blue.
And their home movies are at least watchable.
Mine were wobbly, unscripted , irritatingly jiggly and full of Ers, Ums and mumblings.
Good memories though.
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Stemar
Well-Known Member
That depends on what's in the bras
Blueboatman
Well-Known Member
Better out than inThat depends on what's in the bras
Stemar
Well-Known Member
Again, it all depends. I doubt it would take me more than a minute or two with safe search turned off to prove my point, but I expect my pic would disappear in about the same time, I'd get a ban, and anyone unlucky enough to see it would be looking for the eye bleach - or maybe not, there are those who like that sort of thing.
Chiara’s slave
Well-Known Member
I’ll bow to your greater knowledge.Again, it all depends. I doubt it would take me more than a minute or two with safe search turned off to prove my point, but I expect my pic would disappear in about the same time, I'd get a ban, and anyone unlucky enough to see it would be looking for the eye bleach - or maybe not, there are those who like that sort of thing.
SaltyC
Well-Known Member
AAh, the days of the 'auxiliary' engine! It was there BUT would it start. If it did would it go in astern. Approach nothing faster than you are willing to hit it.Ordinarily, I would tend to agree with you. You've usually got a firm hold on reality. However....
Sometime or other in the past 60-odd years, I did my share of RYA-style cajoling biggish boats to perform tricks their designers hadn't intended - as did most of us. Then I remembered:
I was persuaded by a friend to lend a hand from time to time on his frayed-at-the-edges Rival 34. Over several years, this included a 'positioning' from Cardiff to Oban via the Wild West of Ireland, on and off moorings and anchor into Port Ellen, Crinan and Oban, through the Dorus Mhor, most of the larger CI harbours, an 'arrival' into the Brest Chateau marina, same thing at Newlyn. All of these and more required the unexpected and frustrating deployment of 'dinghy handling skills' 'cos his ropey old BMC hadn't seen a spanner, screwdriver, impeller or oil filter change since Pontius was a pilot.
I'm not taking sides in this contretemps - merely recalling I was reet glad of John Goode's 'PBO' series of how-to-do-it booklets and a half-remembered recollection in Yachting Monthly of the ancient skill of 'drudging'.
Wansworth
Well-Known Member
My father after the family moved to the south coast was keen on a westerly 22,we had the brochure but I wasn’t till he inherited he splashed out on a Halcyon 27 in 1969 by the the family was really just two as we had all left home.
johnalison
Well-Known Member
During much of the ‘70s and ‘80s I had a Mystere with a 12hp Dolphin 2-stroke. Although it could drive us as nearly five knots, I mainly thought of is as an auxiliary, and, now I think of it, we struggled under sail for hours in passages that I would now do in no time under motor. The longest leg we did was Blackwater to Ijmuiden, starting with a healthy beam reach but when this faded motored for 15-20 hours. The main problem was traipsing around strange towns carrying cans and looking for a garage that sold petrol.
