Best Bluewater Cruising boats?

[tcm]

Sat at anchor here in Dominica there are a surprising number of French steel boats that are set up for ocean sailing. The ARC probably doesn't attract so many French but a lot cross in these home built steel yachts.
I suspect the ARC has a high percentage of new ocean sailers who choose a production boat for their adventure. I wonder what boat they would choose once they had crossed West To East across the Atlantic? The return trip is a different beast which may explain why so many return on a ship. Having done both ways our second ocean sailing yacht was a little more tailered to ocean sailing and living on the anchor than a production yacht. We haven't been into a marina other than to buy diesel for 14 months and that's just the way we like it.
The very experienced sailers we have met that have circumnavigated have specific ideas about what they want out of a yacht and it is rarely delivered in a production yacht.
I wouldn't judge the list in the article as definitive. There are a few good yachts in the list and a few I would never consider for ocean sailing when the going gets tough.

Hum ... you ponder about the french doing the ARC ...altho only a small proportion of transat sailors cross with the ARC (under 10%) and of course the clever froggies have their own tv sailing channel, offshore racing school and so on. Several transat rally options include higher-speed racing than the ARC = RdeRum or the other more cruisey options via Senegal and Fr Guyana. Even when in the carib, I suppose the french may also have a more distant targets - French Polynesia, NewCal and Reunion all have the nice supermarkets and the language. The steel hull is a Moitissier thing though many seem to like aluminium, or speedy catamarans...

 

[tcm]

I find some of the comments quite amusing with varying opinions about what's best. My post #58 lists one guy's troubles on a crossing. Wind vane failed, repaired in Cape Verde, failed again on way to Bermuda. 1st backup linear drive then failed (most likely hadn't been updated with steel gears) and second backup, a tiller pilot on emergency steering tiller, couldn't cope in those seas. From his experience, hard to tell what's best

The electro-mech linear drives fall apart in big seas, hydraulic rams seem much better

 

[mattonthesea]

Good on you ohmaggie. It's great out there - heading back myself in thenext couple of years

 

[mattonthesea]

Steve,

in my experience you're right: apparently, as a society, we are becoming more 'buy your experience' than make it yourself. But it doesn't matter if you're an ARC or a NotARC; the scariest thing is slipping those lines for up to a month at sea. The two are separated by the ARC occupying LP for the month before. As soon as they left we all piled in the year I crossed. But on the other side it is just an organisational thing. No one really thinks anything of it except for the odd piss-take. The camaraderie of the sea is much more valued. We all remembered the anticipation and how we all went and bought something at the last minute; a sort of modern sacrificial money burning And the advice from this forum is fantastic; I'm not sure that I would have been able to do half the stuff I did but for them (eg the canal through Guadeloupe, stuffing box maintenance, the autopilot elastic band)

When anyone said I was brave for doing it solo I said that anyone who slips the lines is brave; being solo is just taking no crew!

On a slightly different note (sorry OP) I took up climbing a couple of years ago. I find being above the clip has a more concentrated but similar feel to setting off on the passages.