Best Boat

[Csail]

There is no perfect boat, you need different boats for different jobs/conditions. I have a few and depending on what i'm doing select the one most suited.

 

[Lakesailor]

Hmm.
The thread has taken a wrong turning. It may be my fault for titling it Best Boat.
Perhaps I should have called it Best Reasons for Choosing a Boat.

The question I posed was...

"How many people buy without a proper assessment of suitability?"

 

[Tranona]

Hmm.
The thread has taken a wrong turning. It may be my fault for titling it Best Boat.
Perhaps I should have called it Best Reasons for Choosing a Boat.

The question I posed was...

"How many people buy without a proper assessment of suitability?"

I will have a go at getting it back on track.

I think the difficulty for many people is they don't know what they don't know. By that I mean they have to imagine what is going to be like - particularly if they are moving up or into a new type of boating.

I have owned 4 boats. The first was a 14ft ply boat I built from a kit. Got me going but only sailed it a couple of times before I bought a Sea Wych kit. Great little boat and the bug bit!

Third boat was bought solely on image - it was what I imagined a strong 26 footer would be. I still have it. I lucked out, although I have carried out some major mods to improve it. However, if I was building new for the same job, my ideal would be very little different.

When we decided to go Med sailing on the basis of 3 weeks chartering in 3 very different boats we had very little experience so went for what was most popular and easily available. Again I think we guessed right and the boat was a success. Subsequent models from the same builder have never really improved from my point of view, and probably on balance have become less desirable for that particular usage.

The real problem of choice comes when you get into the used market where you are faced with 30 or 40 years evolution that reflects all different kinds of new boat buyers needs, plus of course often many attempts at changing things to suit their own foibles.

I guess all you can expect is to get the main design parameters - the ones you can't change, right and recognise that details may need individual attention as you adapt the boat to your specific needs.

 

[photodog]

Hmm.


"How many people buy without a proper assessment of suitability?"

Thats one of the reasons I said that Mine was the best boat...

I bought after a good hard look at stability of these smallish (ie9-10 meter) production boats...

And nothing equivilant even came close to the 139' avs of our boat... this combined with german lloyds certification, and a CE category A rating, and it looked to me like basically the intrinsically safest of what we were looking at.

The fact I get a real hoot sailing it and it will sail itself to windward is a added advantage.