More daft cruising-dinghy dreams...

[Daydream believer]

Dan, This thread has mentions cats but not the Shearwater. Pretty stable---- if you want it to be !!!!! This has a spinnaker. They are cheap & a few are about. I had one years ago & often sailed it single handed. Went pretty quick with just one aboard.
You could find one without the kicking strap track & have a nice comfy bed on the trampoline. There is stowage in the hulls if you care to put in a hatch or two. Our club had a strong fleet but all gone now but a GRP one at least for sale.
Thing is that you would not have to do mods for the kite & trapeze & you do not have to use the trapeze all the time but if you wished you could take a crew & both get out on the wires.
The other cat that has not been mentioned is the Unicorn. Faster still & there is also one of those for sale in our club. Lighter & faster than a shearwater but only one sail.
Forget the Phantom. I have one & it would not suit your kind of sailing. Great boat for racing though !!!

 

[Seajet]

Dan,

I'll keep you posted re my chum's cruising Osprey, it's proven a battle but she's a tough old bird and now we're making real progress.

Andy

 

[Greenheart]

Daydream, cats are an interesting idea, but the question of "which cruising dinghy" is mostly closed, at least for me at the moment.

A gent at my club said he's getting too old for his Hobie 18. It's an 80s boat with the high-rise seats sprouting from the hulls, one of my long-running favourites. Damned heavy though, and not a boat I'd want to have to recover from a capsize, singlehanded.

The Phantom is just about the only una-rigged boat I still sometimes fancy, but at ten-and-a-half stone, I'm really not up to it.

The Osprey is a lovely combination of brisk enough never to be dull, versatile enough to suit my eccentric use, big enough never to feel cramped or insignificant, and an enduring beauty in spite of my modifications. Anyway, I'm besotted.

Andy, is that Vern's Osp you mean? I saw a photo a year or so back. Hope she'll be ready to sail in the spring. What kind of work did she need?

 

[Greenheart]

Duplicated post

 

[Seajet]

Dan,

I had a Dart 18 I didn't like much, zero feel on the helm; but the trampoline was jolly handy with a fit girlfriend !

The current Osprey has holes punched in the bilges each side by the previous owner's inadequatly padded trolley so we need to roll her over on the grass and apply grp patches whenever the temperature suits.

We are still very much ' All Systems Go ', Vern is buying a drysuit + other kit and we're looking forward to duffing up the later trendy club dinghies.

 

[Greenheart]

..current Osprey has holes punched in the bilges each side by the previous owner's inadequately padded trolley so we need to roll her over on the grass and apply grp patches whenever the temperature suits.

Sounds like exactly the same damage as mine must have suffered. Narrow support-bar...heavy old boat with long tail sticking out nine feet behind the trolley. I'm glad mine had been sturdily repaired long before I bought her.

I didn't change trolleys, but tied about twelve of my empty 2l Coke bottles (repressurised in the freezer), longways on the trolley-bar...and those bottles are damned near indestructible...so the midsections of the boat are cosseted by a squashy 5sq ft air-pad. I claim this solution as my own brilliance, though I haven't seen any imitations. It really works well, and couldn't be cheaper.

I rest the rear end of the boat low, on a bundle of about 20 of the same empty bottles, and prop the bows up with a big road-tyre under the mast-foot. I reckon she's quite gently supported, and stable in gales without being rigidly bound in position.

She's best parked bows-up; the cover can't prevent rain running down the mast and accumulating in the cockpit...and the self-bailers' position above the trolley-bar, prevents them being left open to drain her, so I leave the big transom-drains unplugged.

It's a pity the transom drains' relative height above the middle of the cockpit floor prevents them from emptying the cockpit when I'm actually sailing...ironically, I have to stuff tight-fitting cubes of closed-cell foam into the drains before launching. The first time I launched with the drains open, a gallon of water had gushed in before I'd climbed aboard, because the steepness of the slipway sent the stern deep into the breakers. They aren't below the waterline when I'm sailing.

I don't know how keenly Vern actually wants to go sailing; I note he's getting a drysuit, but perhaps his artistic appreciation of her form is greater than his appetite for the significant toil of big-dinghy sailing? I'm pretty sure you've been discussing his boat here since well before I bought mine...

...if the chance arises, you should take her on yourself, Andy! Imagine photos of 2 singlehanded Mk2s in convoy, 3 sails apiece. :encouragement:

Apologies to anyone who's tuned in here still expecting replies to my old dinghy-dreaming thread. I'm hobbled by having to use an iPad while my laptop's in for repairs. I would have illustrated this post to make it less dull.