How far in a small boat

[steve yates]

Don't really know what to say chaps, it's not that difficult but thank you for the kind words anyway.

And Dan, great idea, just get one and go! And if you fancy the 100 mile drive to play in a different area, then the offer stands anytime.

 

[oldharry]

How far? Depends how comfortable you are below. If you can get a good nights sleep, and get half a chance with the weather, you can get some quite decent milage under your keel.

I once took a 20ft plywood Bilge keeled Mystic - not the fastest, nor best to windward by a long chalk - from the Solent to Falmouth and back, harbour hopping all the way in a fortnight, with time fro three or four days in Falmouth befroe returning. Strictly it took a bit longer as I had to leave her in Lyme Regis because the wind off the Bill was reported at F6+ and I had to get back to the office. It was quite hard work, but i enjoyed it far more than later on in fully crewed bigger boats able to do it in much longer passages. But then I suppose thats me - I enjoy the setting off and arriving more than long lonely watches offshore. That too has its own rewards, like raising a buoy or headland from offshore where it should be still gives a thrill even with GPS taking away all the uncertainty, but the challenges of getting in and out of a new harbour safely on my own still does something special for me.

 

[Seajet]

Old Harry,

I know what you mean about solitary watches, watching the dawn come up and the abstract lights resolve into ships, lighthouses and villages.

And wishing for a big sea to land missile to send to whatevever misbgoten Amdram bastard designed the sense of humour into the Mini Seacourse, so whenever low on volts it died with a dramatic Mordred-like " Urgh " shoving the helm hard over, of course always at the worst possible moment like going through the Dolphin Passage

 

[Daydream believer]

but the challenges of getting in and out of a new harbour safely on my own still does something special for me.

I think that sums up why I go sailing. The actually joy of arriving.
The bits between, the navigation etc are obviously part of it, but the end result is what makes it; whether it be one's home port, a frequently visited one or a totally new one.
The further away, the greater the feeling when arriving, knowing that I have actually done it.:encouragement:

 

[LadyInBed]

The further away, the greater the feeling when arriving, knowing that I have actually done it.:encouragement:

In a 22 footer I used to get a tremendous sense of achievement tieing up solo at St Malo or Paimpol. Now, in a 33 footer, I have to get to Spain!

 

[BrianH]

I think that sums up why I go sailing. The actually joy of arriving.
The bits between, the navigation etc are obviously part of it, but the end result is what makes it; whether it be one's home port, a frequently visited one or a totally new one.
The further away, the greater the feeling when arriving, knowing that I have actually done it.:encouragement:

All the times I crossed the North Sea from the NE coast to Holland was always an adventure and a tremendous sense of achievement to arrive, especially so in those days before GPS. A small boat is a slow boat and it always took a few days and nights to raise the coast in both directions while the tides swept us up and down the North Sea every six hours.

Going south the strategy was always to aim high of the destination - usually IJmuiden - then, when the low-lying coast appeared, to turn right until a recognizable feature or light materialized. A night approach was favoured (but not always arranged) when the abundance of navigation lights could be used. Returning was much easier with the high promontory of Flamborough Head appearing on the port bow as our course converged on the Yorkshire coast.

Astro? I carried a sextant and knew how to use it but rarely did we see much of the heavens through the grey, overcast sky that seemed to dog my every trip. RDF was a better tool ... I had a home-made wooden pelorous mounted on the cabin forward bulkhead into which I set a small radio with an internal ferrite-rod antenna and a few extra windings on the tuning coil to extend the LW to cover the marine beacon frequencies; it proved amazingly directional.

That radio came into its own in 1972, mentioned in an earlier post of this thread, returning from Den Helder when we were overcome by a SW gale some ten hours out. As I chronicled in a narrative log all those years ago:

"I resorted to our RDF receiver to get a fix - it was a remarkably small cocked hat result from three beacons, placing us just about in the centre of the North Sea with Whitby due west some 100nm distant. We had drifted 42 miles northeast from our dead reckoning position before taking down all sail, an average leeway drift of 2.5 knots while lying a-hull.

The wind remained a fair, constant and easy pressure, as though making up for all we had been through and we made good progress through the next night and day under full sail. It was late afternoon when Richard was on watch that he called out "Land Ho!" I climbed into the cockpit and stared ahead, wondering where we had ended up - nothing looked familiar. And then we worked it out, what we were seeing was a view of the North Yorkshire moors as we had never seen them before, because never before had we been 20 nautical miles offshore from Whitby, which is what we could later see as we got nearer, nestled under the cliffs and moorlands.

Infuriatingly, the wind started to fade, we could see some smoke over Whitby climbing vertically in the lovely summer evening, we savoured it for a few moments before I went below to start the engine to make the last few miles home. We moored up in the harbour at 21:00 feeling we had passed a rite of passage that none of us would ever like to repeat."​

 

[steve yates]

Dan, if you end up with a lifting keel, this might be an idea! I saw it on fb and thought that would work great on bethfran.
It's basically 2 oversized round fenders with a rope passing under to pull them right down, in my case it would be against the stubkeel.
She settles upright on mud, but hard sand etc she cant's approx 30 degrees. Not unmanageable, but if this keeps her upright, so much the better.

 

[JumbleDuck]

Dan, if you end up with a lifting keel, this might be an idea! I saw it on fb and thought that would work great on bethfran.
It's basically 2 oversized round fenders with a rope passing under to pull them right down, in my case it would be against the stubkeel.
She settles upright on mud, but hard sand etc she cant's approx 30 degrees. Not unmanageable, but if this keeps her upright, so much the better.
View attachment 74883

Isn't that a nice, big wooden leg just behind the fender?

I did see one Hunter 490 - in Aberystwyth before it marinafied - which was held upright when around by two chunky tyres held either side of the hull. Fine on a mooring; not practical for cruising.

 

[dancrane]

Thanks Steve, it's nice to know that various ideas I've had lately, have been used to good effect by people already.

I'd been picturing a pair of shaped, firm foam sections that could rope together and be strapped under the back end of an Anderson 22, so she'd sit upright on hard sand. It'd take some trial and development, and I'm not sure where one would stow them under way...

 

[steve yates]

Isn't that a nice, big wooden leg just behind the fender?

I did see one Hunter 490 - in Aberystwyth before it marinafied - which was held upright when around by two chunky tyres held either side of the hull. Fine on a mooring; not practical for cruising.

aye, but my bethfran just a flattish stub ballast keel with a flattish crosssection that the plate drops through, I reckon this might work on her. Could even put both on one side if you knew which way she would lean, or could make her lean one way or t'other

 

[dancrane]

I was today reminded of what CoVianna said (on the Hunter Medina vs Swift 18 thread), about his Swift being easily stopped dead by steep chop, unlike slightly bigger boats he'd sailed.

On the Swift 18 owners' site there's a question from years ago, by a chap who while sailing solo in 20 knots of wind, found the Swift wouldn't tack. This is a dread of mine since I had the same problem in the dinghy in May. Even though various Swift owners described what they believed might solve this problem, I sensed that they'd all experienced the design's reluctance in those conditions...

...the issue being high topsides, minimal underwater profile, and only three-quarters of a tonne displacement, so in a fresh breeze there's a lot of windage and very little momentum to carry the hull all the way through the tack.

Doubtless a balance of jib and mainsail area is critical in so small a vessel and this chap may have got that wrong, but a downside of very small yachts seems to be the one thing I'm hoping to leave behind as I graduate from dinghy-limitations - this light sporty yacht (with less than 25% ballast) needs driving hard to keep going in the rough stuff, yet isn't immune from being overpowered.

Short clip showing a Swift 18, quite hard-pressed under reefed sails, despite calm water:

 

[{151760}]

I was today reminded of what CoVianna said (on the Hunter Medina vs Swift 18 thread), about his Swift being easily stopped dead by steep chop, unlike slightly bigger boats he'd sailed.

On the Swift 18 owners' site there's a question from years ago, by a chap who while sailing solo in 20 knots of wind, found the Swift wouldn't tack. This is a dread of mine since I had the same problem in the dinghy in May. Even though various Swift owners described what they believed might solve this problem, I sensed that they'd all experienced the design's reluctance in those conditions...

...the issue being high topsides, minimal underwater profile, and only three-quarters of a tonne displacement, so in a fresh breeze there's a lot of windage and very little momentum to carry the hull all the way through the tack.

Doubtless a balance of jib and mainsail area is critical in so small a vessel and this chap may have got that wrong, but a downside of very small yachts seems to be the one thing I'm hoping to leave behind as I graduate from dinghy-limitations - this light sporty yacht (with less than 25% ballast) needs driving hard to keep going in the rough stuff, yet isn't immune from being overpowered.

Short clip showing a Swift 18, quite hard-pressed under reefed sails, despite calm water:

Hard pressed? Really? It looks to be going along really well to me despite a somewhat knackered mainsail.
As to the other problem, all yachts have their limitations regardless of size. I think it's fair to say that most people will consider those limits to be at lower wind strengths and less rough sea conditions in smaller boats. We have found sea states that were difficult to manage in our 33-footer. The advantage for us is that we can start our nice big inboard engine to bash through it. When we had our Achilles 24, which is an extremely (and I do mean extremely) seaworthy boat but which was not fun to sail to windward in a short steep sea in a force 5 or more, with just a 4hp outboard, our solution was to not go there. Most of us will accept the limits of our boats, be they safety or merely comfort limits and sail accordingly.
Assuming the Swift 18 design has this particular design characteristic, don't assume that all other small boats are the same, though.
I once met a sailor in a small Westerly who had sailed everywhere from Holland to Brittany in two fortnight's holidays each year over many years, and had only once had to leave the boat and return by ferry. He never left port if the forecast was giving more than force 4. His boat was a bilge-keeler, too, so I doubt if he was too keen on a lot of windward work.

 

[dancrane]

Hard pressed? Really? It looks to be going along really well to me despite a somewhat knackered mainsail.

Making progress, sure; but Swifts are said to sail at their best, very close to upright (being very beamy and flat-bottomed) and this one is heeling pretty hard.

I take your point, as I read it, that every size of vessel has a point in the Beaufort scale where things go from still manageable to stressed, comfortless and potentially hazardous...

...I'm afraid that while I really like the little Swift's purposeful rig and compact proportions, her inevitable limitations as a seagoing vessel mean she represents a bridge between dinghy-wilfulness and yacht-sedateness, rather than her being a fully-fledged yacht.

The bright side being, these little boats seem to have a ready market so won't be hard to trade up from when the time comes.

Still trying to persuade myself.

 

[Seajet]

Dan,

if your bank manager can't agree with something 22' long I've always liked the look of the Swift 18 ( can easily cost more though ) - and if worried about offshore capabilities, think of the plywood 19' Caprice and 17' Silhouette's we grew up with, compared to them the Swift is a cert' for the Vendee !

Last season we saw Lively Lady again; I was struck how little shelter the cockpit gave compared to my ' little blue boat ', and the speed differences on reading Sir Alecs' book yet another time.

 

[{151760}]

Making progress, sure; but Swifts are said to sail at their best, very close to upright (being very beamy and flat-bottomed) and this one is heeling pretty hard.

I take your point, as I read it, that every size of vessel has a point in the Beaufort scale where things go from still manageable to stressed, comfortless and potentially hazardous...

...I'm afraid that while I really like the little Swift's purposeful rig and compact proportions, her inevitable limitations as a seagoing vessel mean she represents a bridge between dinghy-wilfulness and yacht-sedateness, rather than her being a fully-fledged yacht.

The bright side being, these little boats seem to have a ready market so won't be hard to trade up from when the time comes.

Still trying to persuade myself.

I'm going to be frank and say that I think most of what you fear is entirely in your head. What do you mean by dinghy-wilfulness? And yacht-sedateness? All sailing boats have to be sailed. All sailing boats heel (leaving multis out of the discussion, that is). You talk about things being stressed, comfortless and potentially hazardous. You sail a dinghy! Any small yacht will be better than a dinghy in those respects. It doesn't require holding up, you can move around at will. Again being frank, you seem to find ways of talking yourself out of a yacht rather than into one. Entirely your choice, of course, but there are many thousands of people having some really good times in small boats in complete safety. And there are a smaller number of people having good, very adventurous times in small boats.
It's something you can do if you want to.

 

[dancrane]

I'm going to be frank and say that I think most of what you fear is entirely in your head. What do you mean by dinghy-wilfulness? And yacht-sedateness?

I thank you for your frankness. With no actual time aboard a Swift 18, I can only go by others' descriptions of the boat. These accounts alone have put the fear in my head. The Swift looked ideal to me.

By dinghy wilfulness, I mean the tendency to heel suddenly and severely before small gusts, on days when the same wind doesn't spill the drinks aboard a 25-footer. By yacht-sedateness, I mean the steady, imperturbable progress upwind in a force 4/5 that I experienced in an Achilles 24 in May.

I realise any yacht will be less tippy than any racing dinghy, and the Swift 18's sporty styling and lightness hitherto struck me as an ideal compromise, floating in 12 inches of water, still planing entertainingly in extremis, but without the necessity to right her, or find accommodation, or haul out after sailing...

...the trouble as I interpret it from others' accounts, is that she's too much like a dinghy, and not enough like a yacht - so waves and headwinds over 20 knots represent a serious barrier, just as 12 knots is a barrier to me in the dinghy. Twenty is better than 12, but it's still a low threshold for coastal sailing.

Few videos featuring designs like this, show anything except perfect days when it's all blissful and easy. Non-racers edit-out their crash gybes, yells of fright, vomit, and sandwiches squashed underfoot in sudden squalls. That gives the impression that on bright days when people want a bit of cruising fun, this tiny boat is just the ticket. I suspect a boat this small is only as good as the weather it encounters, while a bigger boat is more usable, more often.

And as Andy said above, Swifts aren't always cheaper than many bigger boats (with attendant bigger bills, I know)...but at least bigger yachts are yachts, not cute miniatures which are neither quite one thing nor the other.

I want to be persuaded, but if I find reasons to talk myself out of buying boats, that has to be better than voicing dissatisfaction only discovered after purchase. I was hoping that detailed honest accounts by Swift 18 owners would iron out all my doubts, but they've raised more than I began with.

 

[{151760}]

I thank you for your frankness. With no actual time aboard a Swift 18, I can only go by others' descriptions of the boat. These accounts alone have put the fear in my head. The Swift looked ideal to me.

By dinghy wilfulness, I mean the tendency to heel suddenly and severely before small gusts, on days when the same wind doesn't spill the drinks aboard a 25-footer. By yacht-sedateness, I mean the steady, imperturbable progress upwind in a force 4/5 that I experienced in an Achilles 24 in May.

I realise any yacht will be less tippy than any racing dinghy, and the Swift 18's sporty styling and lightness hitherto struck me as an ideal compromise, floating in 12 inches of water, still planing entertainingly in extremis, but without the necessity to right her, or find accommodation, or haul out after sailing...

...the trouble as I interpret it from others' accounts, is that she's too much like a dinghy, and not enough like a yacht - so waves and headwinds over 20 knots represent a serious barrier, just as 12 knots is a barrier to me in the dinghy. Twenty is better than 12, but it's still a low threshold for coastal sailing.

Few videos featuring designs like this, show anything except perfect days when it's all blissful and easy. Non-racers edit-out their crash gybes, yells of fright, vomit, and sandwiches squashed underfoot in sudden squalls. That gives the impression that on bright days when people want a bit of cruising fun, this tiny boat is just the ticket. I suspect a boat this small is only as good as the weather it encounters, while a bigger boat is more usable, more often.

And as Andy said above, Swifts aren't always cheaper than many bigger boats (with attendant bigger bills, I know)...but at least bigger yachts are yachts, not cute miniatures which are neither quite one thing nor the other.

I want to be persuaded, but if I find reasons to talk myself out of buying boats, that has to be better than voicing dissatisfaction only discovered after purchase. I was hoping that detailed honest accounts by Swift 18 owners would iron out all my doubts, but they've raised more than I began with.

Ok, that's clearly explained. Going to windward in twenty knots in an 18-footer won't be much fun for long, it's true. In our 33-footer we'll beat down the Solent in that sort of wind, but we wouldn't cross the channel. Ditto our Achilles 24. Not that they couldn't, it would just be hard work. So if you want to sail to windward in those sort of conditions then an 18-footer wouldn't be many people's first choice. But if you modify your criteria slightly, then the field widens considerably.
Incidentally, we had perhaps one crash gybe, (most likely due to careless helming), no vomit, one yell of fright from my wife, (caused by an unwise decision to gybe just off the Needles in a force 6) and no squashed sandwiches in our Achilles in 10 years. Sudden squalls (which are quite rare, in my experience,) were dealt with by spilling the main (just like a dinghy) or simply heaving-to to reef or wait out the squall. I keep mentioning it as, though it has a longer LWL than any 18-footer, its accommodation was very similar, as was its rather low freeboard. But it was definitely a proper yacht.
There is no ideal yacht that behaves perfectly in all weathers.

 

[ProDave]

I am not an expereinced sailor by any means compared to many on here, but I have sailed on quite a few small boats often as crew for others (indeed the largest boat I have ever been on was a Contessa 32)

One of the most seaworthy and well behaved boats I have sailed on was a Folksong, a derivative of the Folkboat. It really was a well behaved and seaworthy boat, but probably not a fantastic cruiser as my other memory of it was there was barely sitting room in the cabin, let alone standing room. (other versions of the folkboat do better in that respect)

My own little 18 footer that I sold earlier in the year (A Frolic 18) was probably in the category of the swift, quite beamy for it's length and tended to be a bit tender. But it was still vastly more stable than a dinghy. It did give us one or 2 interesting moments, but almost certainly a case of the boat could handle more than the crew.

Even "big" boats heel a lot when hard pressed. I was crew on a Tomahawk 25 this year and that could get quite a heel on when pressed, but it was not frightening, it was great fun. That was in a race, and all the boats were similarly heeling, even the larger ones.

I think the message is whatever you buy will be good at some things and not so good at others. If you wait for something perfect, you might have a long wait. Just but the best you can and go sailing.

 

[steve yates]

I wouldn't worry about it dan, I've only ever crash gybed bethfran twice, in all those miles. You can be damn certain that you are not going to go right over in any 18ft yacht up to force 5, whereas you can be dead certain that you will go right over in any dinghy . Just dial down the sailplan to suit, if you must thrash to windward. The other thing you have to accept is that there are times when weather or sea conditions simply say no, you cannot go there, or be on time. That's just cruising for you. The difference between ANY small yacht and your osprey is that you will simply cruise an awful lot more often and a lot further; because it's easier to just go and your comfort levels and space available are far far superior.
By the way, I can walk around the side decks of the bradwell and she barely moves an inch.

 

[Kelpie]

When we got our first yacht, I assumed that I would carry on using my Wayfarer for quick day sails, keeping the yacht for longer cruises.
Something that came as a surprise was that the yacht proved to far less hassle. It was always afloat, it never needed bailed out, it was always rigged, it had sails already hanked on, you didn't need to wear any special clothing, and you didn't have to give much thought to the weather. If you got becalmed five miles from home you simply turned the engine on and came back.
The dinghy became the labour of love, only taken out on perfect days when you knew you had enough time to justify the extra setting up.

However the dinghy remains more fun to sail in absolute terms. It's very much like having a motorbike and a car really.