How big is BIG enough?

dancrane said:
Depends on the young lady herself. If she's mad on sailing, she'll enjoy the most rewarding performance boat Zambant can locate for £40K. If she enjoys the envy of her schoolfriends, she'll prefer a slick, luxurious boat like the Riviera, to any roomy old barge.

If she's inactive and untidy and sulky, no boat of any design will suit; and Zambant would be wise to cut and run! :eek::rolleyes:
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You are an unbounded optimist.

How many teenage girls do you know (not in the biblical sense, of course)?
 
zambant said:
So what's the cheapest way to heat a boat - excluding solid fuel and old boats :cool:
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Probably diesel - a Webasto or Eberspacher. We spent most of January and early February on our 33 footer including that very cold week or so when there was snow on the ground continuously in Kent. We burned about £100 worth of diesel through the Webasto - but it was running on high power 24 hours a day - at least one of us was on board pretty much all that time. It heats up quickly, so if you and your daughter will be going out to work/school most days, you can turn it down low, or put it on a timer and get away with a fair bit less. Over the last half of February, with warmer temperatures outside, we've kept the boat comfortably warm and the needle on the fuel gauge has hardly moved.
 
Now since Zambants post was in the middle of the night, either he works strange hours (like me) or he is worried and up in the middle of the night. so if it's the latter, be nice folks.

My personal choice would be a motor sailer, plenty of room, beamy and with a good engine can "Out and Back" quickly enough and sails reasonably.

Eberspacher heating is an absolute must, either blown air of Hydronic.

A Fisher or Colvic Watson?
 
dancrane said:
Zambant did say the cheapest way to heat the boat...here's a link to Eberspacher's 2012 price list. Starts small for gaskets and rivets, and works all the way up to about 7% of his total fund for boat-buying:

http://www.mellorautoelectrical.co.uk/pdf/Eberspacher 2012 Price List.pdf

One to mull over on board, during the temperate months ahead...
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Perfectly true - but he is talking about buying a second-hand boat. The point of my original post was to point out some extra things that he should be looking for when he chooses one. Plenty of boats have diesel blown-air heating fitted and it does not make that much difference to the second-hand price. There is a real danger selecting a full time liveaboard in the spring/summer that you can get carried away by the image of sitting in the cockpit of your new boat having dinner on a warm summer evening and not consider the risk of sitting shivering down below in the same boat in mid-January...
 
I lived aboard my 100 year old lifeboat (in a marina) for 2 years during some of the coldest winters imaginable. The boat had all but no insulation, and - in the marina - an electric fan heater was fine. The issue in the marina was not so much heat as damp, and that's why I can't recommend enough sorting the insulation out on whatever you live on - I think there was a good article in the last PBO?

Out of the marina, Eberspacher is of course the best bet...

The comment about the single man approach is well founded, BTW. My general experience was that I was as happy as a pig in poo, but that women who visited rarely understood - "How do you live like this..?" That said, I'm a teacher, and a firm believer that children are far more adaptable and accepting than they are often painted to be...
 
Bobobolinsky said:
Now since Zambants post was in the middle of the night, either he works strange hours (like me) or he is worried and up in the middle of the night. so if it's the latter, be nice folks.

My personal choice would be a motor sailer, plenty of room, beamy and with a good engine can "Out and Back" quickly enough and sails reasonably.

Eberspacher heating is an absolute must, either blown air of Hydronic.

A Fisher or Colvic Watson?
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Perceptive - the latter
 
maby said:
There is a real danger selecting a full time liveaboard in the spring/summer that you can get carried away by the image of sitting in the cockpit of your new boat having dinner on a warm summer evening and not consider the risk of sitting shivering down below in the same boat in mid-January...
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Very true. And I've never heard a bad word spoken of Webasto or Eberspacher, if they're already in the boat one chooses!

Certainly needs dealing with in advance of the season it'll be required. And heating's handy for drying things, even in August.

A capacious calorifier may be useful, given teenage warm-water-usage... :eek::eek:

The darkness of most yachts' saloons during dull winter days, led me to think the Westerly Riviera was ideal. A deck saloon or large wheelhouse is recommended, despite its reduction of sailing performance.
 
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zambant said:
I will need a sailing yacht, bilge keel...
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Why bilge keel?

Lots of good boats are excluded thereby. I'm guessing you want the boat to stay upright on a cheapish drying mooring?

If so, as was said earlier, it's worth looking at catamarans. Catalacs are roomy, not exactly pretty or sporty, but safe and solid, and mademoiselle could have a hull of her own to make untidy. :rolleyes:

Of course, if some of your year will be spent in marinas, costs for berthing a catamaran can be higher...
 
Higgs, that's a heinously boring response.

I'm thinking John Mills and Hayley...which film was it? The Truth About Spring. What 13 y/o wouldn't benefit from adventures under sail with her dad?
 
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dancrane said:
Higgs, that's a heinously boring response.

I'm thinking John Mills and Hayley...which film was it? The Truth About Spring. What 13 y/o wouldn't benefit from adventures under sail with her dad?
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100% with you, Dan. He's not talking about taking her out of school and bumming round the world for several years, just moving onto a boat. I wish we had done it when our son was young - every summer at the yacht club we see eight, nine, ten year olds out on the river racing their Oppies and Toppers - when they come ashore in their wet suits and lifejackets they have a confidence and poise that I would have loved to see in our son. Being out on open water in command of a boat of any size teaches a self-reliance that is very valuable in later life.
 
Exactly! And a few weeks sailing around Brittany in the summer holidays, if ma'mselle can bring a schoolfriend, will be one of the character-building, fun, exciting memories she carries to old age.

And very good for learning French and geography. And there's lots of maths in navigation... :)
 
davidej said:
I'd love to think you are right but sounds to me like a prescription for a girl to want to spend her weekends withe her mother
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I doubt that many teenagers will appreciate the nomadic, slum-it existence that quite a lot of liveaboards seem to adopt. But there is a real mystique around living on a boat provided it is presented correctly. You are not a "liveaboard", and it is not a "boat". You are a "sailor", and the thing you live on is most certainly a "yacht"! It needs to stay clean, well polished and tidy - don't think African Queen - think that thing that Pierce Brosnan was sailing in Mama Mia! You show me any teenage girl that would turn down the opportunity to live on that - and bring friends home too! OK - £40k does not run to that 70 footer, but image is important - you are yacht dewellers, not floating gypsies!
 
maby said:
...image is important - you are yacht dewellers, not floating gypsies!
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Damned right. Although, she'll very quickly lose interest if her responsibilities extend to brass-polishing and deck-scrubbing. She'll enjoy the prestige perceived by friends, but she won't readily adopt a harder life to justify it.

Vital that she has her own cabin, I reckon. I had a sixteen y/o girlfriend, many, many years ago. We were together a long time, but I never learned what colour her bedroom carpet was (that's not a metaphor!) because of all her rubble on the floor.

The tight dimensions of any boat costing less than half a mill, will drive liveaboards a bit nuts after a while. That needs to be made worthwhile, by the boat's regular use as a yacht, rather than as a little house that happens to float. :)
 
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