Quality Ocean cruising boats?

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Dont forget - most long term cruisers never / rarely see wind over 35Kt - biggest issue is light winds.

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Not quite sure where you got that from? OK rarely is a word that can mean lots of things... Personally when I have rarely been in lots of wind I rarely enjoyed it - in fact it was quite challenging and in my experience the heavier the boat the easier it was.. 60k in my steel 42 ft boat - hove to - in the Canary Islands was actually not too bad.. big very heavy boat... During my circumnavigation I was rarely beaten up but when I was....

Light winds are light -- one solution is to switch the engine on... or just go slowly. I was rarely challenged by light winds - just had to work a bit harder on the sail trim.
 
Just one element seems to be missing from what, so far, has been a very thorough cover of the points. Durability.

Most circumnavigators expect to own/live on their vessels for several years. Over such a period, some heavy weather is inevitable. A more lightly built vessel will be more heavily stressed, therefore more prone to rigging or other failure.
 
I did encounter several Bav's around the world and for the most part they were doing OK...Did look a bit tired even when relatively new but were doing the job.
I also met some 26-30 footers that were also doing OK under the command of excellent sailors.. In the end it is the 'person and not the boat'... You can probably get round in almost anything given a bit of luck.

a few things are sure... You will almost certainly get beaten up once or twice.
Your fear level will decrease as you get used to stronger winds.

There will be light airs and a good engine with some jerry jugs of spare fuel is a major asset.

If your hung rudder with no skeg hits a bit of railway sleeper type drift wood then it will probably be damaged - the skeg of my boat acquired 3 scars over a 10 year period. The ARC seems to have more than its fair share of damaged steering or is it that the ARC encourages boats built for speed and space rather than crossing oceans, when nobody is actually steering or looking out for debris...

Personally I would rather have a heavy boat with at least a skeg protecting the rudder and with rigging that will withstand some really heavy shocks.. but it takes all sorts...
 
True Jim. Build quality is very important for a long distance sailor. There is a lot more wear and tear if you sail 12 months of the year as opposed to 2. I don't want to get into the "bashing of the Ben/Jen/Bav" that you will find on the Scuttlebutt forum. They are all good boats for their cause. However, I do notice that when I spend my time in nice anchorages taking in the sights, my cruising buddies with Bavarias are all doing maintenance, due to the wear and tear. That is not my idea of cruising.
 
A biased view of course ... but one of these ain't a bad compromise (except a bit too much maintenance:-))
Persistence.jpg


Built like a brick sh**house and sails too, but not too keen at < 40 apparent, but who is!
 
I know I said "there is no perfect cruising yacht" in the thread above and I strongly believe that. That notwithstanding, let me share with you something that I think comes very close to this, it ticks most checks of the "common denominators" of a perfect sailing yacht for circumnavigating with a family:

http://www.najad.se/

select the Najad 440CC in the "our yachts" menu and enjoy! This would not be a yacht for me because I want to go racing as well, but I can see that this could be the ideal for very many long distance cruisers.
 
The steering failed on the Sweden, and then the emergency tiller lasted an hour or two. It was fitted with cable steering. The Bav had rod steering to a very substantial rudder set up and and an emergency fitting that was better designed, it would have been nearly impossible to break as the Sweden one had.

Accomodation layout (Bav), good bunk sea berths, plenty of ventilation in aft cabin with good windows to talk to those in the cockpit. Storage for rubbish in deck locker on fore deck meant that any smell was blown forewards. No traveller in the cockpit meant there was more space for lying/sleeping.

I will add that this was a Bav 390 of 1991 vintage, the Sweden was a Sweden 38 from around 1990. In those days the Bavs were well up with the Swedens on quality and size/standard of fittings.
 
We went for an Oyster. She's an older lady (1989), so no hydraulics and wide-screen TVs on our baby, and we were very lucky to get it for a real bargain. We never considered ourselves as potential Oyster owners!

The only recommendation I can make to you, based on our experience, is be willing to travel to view potential boats, if it's feasible. We bought ours in Turkey, where we are now based (though planning to start moving over the next year), having viewed plenty of boats in both the UK and northern Europe. I may have misinterpreted your original post but if you are looking for a blue-water cruiser then you must be planning on sailing long distances. If this is the case then it shouldn't matter so much where you buy the boat.

FWIW, other equivalent boats mentioned above (Malos, HR et al) were more expensive than our Oyster. That's not to say we didn't view these. I had my eye on a beautiful Swan but it just wasn't a practical liveaboard. Great for turning heads and extreme sailing, but bad if you don't like walking on your hands and knees to get to the cabin! HR are great boats too, but we just couldn't find one in our budget.

Resale price isn't an issue for us. If the boat doesn't hold its value as much as others we're not going to lose sleep over it. Anyway, by the time we've finished with Esper she'll be rather battered and worn and looking to draw her pension!
 
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The steering failed on the Sweden, and then the emergency tiller lasted an hour or two. It was fitted with cable steering.

[/ QUOTE ]Thanks TigaWave for responding with more info, very useful. Let me try to address your points without sounding like I am defending a Sweden (which I own). It is true that cable steering can fail and I have experienced it more times than I would have liked to in many designs. It is just a fact that most recent designs have cable steering. As with everything else, there is a pro and con argument that I will not go into now. Suffice to say you have to service both systems. Rod steering gets a lot of tensions and load on all the rods and ankles in the system. Cable steering can get chafed. Normally the steering manufacturers advise that the cable should be replaced every five years. Few owners do that. I just replaced my cable after 10 years and discovered that it was indeed chafed in places I had not seen. In summary, I do think that this is a normal maintenaince issue with cable steering in general (to most boats) and not necessarily a Sweden problem.

Your observation of the inadequate design of the emergency rudder was important. I immediately checked mine (a later design) and it seems very sturdy, but this is always a problem; you never know how it really works until in a real emergency. I always take some comfort from the fact that my autopilot is an excellent emergency steering device; it works independently on the rudder flywheel and will work well even if the cable is broken. That is my primary emergency rudder and it will work directly at the press of a button.

Your observations of the early generation Bavaria is also to the point. In the 80's and early 90's Bavaria tried to become a second Hallberg-Rassy and tried very hard (and sometimes successfully) to design a boat as good as the HR. There are indeed some very good 15-20 year old Bavarias. Unfortunately, they did not really succeed in the marketplace against HR so they changed tack sometime in the mid 90's and went for the mass market and aimed instead for Ben/Jen. They have had more market success with this strategy, but it means that they are today building a very different boat than in the beginning of the 90's. I think they are today building a very good holiday boat for a very good price, but nothing I would ever consider crossing an ocean in.
 
Have a look at Nauticats. By the way, despite the name, all Nauticats are monohulls and very high quality Finnish yachts. You won't get a very new one on your budget but you should get a nice used one.
 
Maybe check the turning block castings where the cable runs from vertical to horizontal, it was one of these castings that broke two days from the Canaries heading West, the cable was nearly new.

The new Bavs are a different boat altogether...pre 92 a very serious alternative to a Sweden. Most people don't know these boats very well as not many were made compared to the mass production of today.

Swedens are still a nice boat, and quick. After repairing the steering we crossed to Barbados in a fraction less than 15 days, average 7.5 knots if I remember correctly.
 
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