Real Differences Between Mass Produced and Quality Yachts

I also added some deck tack points for staysails, a proper ram-style autopilot, watermaker and a laptop with the latest weather analysis and routing software.
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I honestly think the access to detailed weather on a crossing has completely changed the parameters of which type of boat you need.

On the West/East crossing I was on we only ever got the weather we ordered.

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PS Welcome back roblpm
 
roaringgirl said:
No, they are absolutely not and most people will be fine, most of the time. However, mid-ocean rudder-loss is not an experience I wish to repeat. Mid-ocean keel-loss is not an experience many get the opportunity to repeat.

I once crewed for a crazy old woman. Before departing the marina on an ocean passage, I asked to check the liferaft as it wasn't mounted outside. She gestured to the cockpit locker. Half an hour later the other crew and I had managed to get it out of the locker. We mounted it on the guard rail while the skipper/owner insisted that it being buried in a cockpit locker had "never been a problem before". For most people, most of the time all the safety things are never an issue. The problem is that you don't get to choose when those decisions/cognitive dissonance is put are the test.

Don't mislead yourself: the fact that I, and others have crossed oceans with a bolted-on keel and a spade rudder doesn't mean that no-one is ever going to lose a bolt-on keel or a spade rudder on an ocean passage.
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I think I crewed for her a few times too. Contessa 32 by any chance?
 
roaringgirl said:
No, they are absolutely not and most people will be fine, most of the time. However, mid-ocean rudder-loss is not an experience I wish to repeat. Mid-ocean keel-loss is not an experience many get the opportunity to repeat.

I once crewed for a crazy old woman. Before departing the marina on an ocean passage, I asked to check the liferaft as it wasn't mounted outside. She gestured to the cockpit locker. Half an hour later the other crew and I had managed to get it out of the locker. We mounted it on the guard rail while the skipper/owner insisted that it being buried in a cockpit locker had "never been a problem before". For most people, most of the time all the safety things are never an issue. The problem is that you don't get to choose when those decisions/cognitive dissonance is put are the test.

Don't mislead yourself: the fact that I, and others have crossed oceans with a bolted-on keel and a spade rudder doesn't mean that no-one is ever going to lose a bolt-on keel or a spade rudder on an ocean passage.
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... it also doesn't mean that a well found boat with encapsulated keel and skeg hung rudder isn't going to get holed by a shipping container, rolled by a freak wave, have it`s slow draining cockpit swamped, have crew injured by the low slung boom or traveller/mainsheet in the cockpit, get run over by a tanker, set itself on fire due to ancient wiring, gas you in your sleep or blow up due to an outdated or leaking gas installation ... there are numerous ways you can meet your demise on the worlds oceans, and the type of rudder/keel you have is one small aspect of the whole.

You will always find production yachts like Beneteaus, Jeanneaus, Bavarias, Dufour, Sun Odysseys etc circumnavigating without killing their crews - and even Hallberg Rassy have moved away from skegs and the keel is bolted onto a deep bilge - materials and construction methods change - life moves on but peoples opinions don't seem to.

One of the reasons I will always stick to as modern a boat as I can afford is the mess boats get into the older they are, you can't tell where they have been damaged or bodged and painted over, a lot of the "modifications" are unsightly and sometimes dangerous, the wiring and electrics are usually shot, with a rats-nest of decades old wiring ... the tankage is usually buried in the bowels of the boat and/or leaking, the systems are difficult to access and there is usually always water leaking into the bilge from somewhere. All the sealant and joints around deck hardware, windows, rub-rails, deck fittings are old and past it and you have no idea if a 50 year old design that was produced in low numbers was actually up to the job - the deck may well be delaminating and rotting under your feet .... boats from last century were built in the days before stress analysis and from materials that have been much improved since. The manufacturing process relied on manual labour where the quality depended on which employee did what - a yards reputation was built on whether their boats fell to bits in service or not, and whether they had any nasty vices. Many needed post-launch modifications for weak areas in the design like chain-plates or bulkheads.

If you are someone who needs the comfort blanket of a "traditional design" then fine, buy one and be happy - I don't, I prefer to go sailing than spend my time nursing an antique back to health and wondering which bit is going to fail or fall off next .... of course, you could spend a fortune in time and money on a total refit, but I'm not going to waste years fixing up a boat when I could be cruising instead.

Each to their own (y) ? ... I will admire a well found, pristine old boat as much as the next man - some of them do look beautiful - I just don't want to own one and I would never prioritise a specific underwater configuration above all the other parts of the boat.

My ideal would be a 45ft or larger AWB - as recent as I could afford, maybe a well kept 3-cabin Oceanis Clipper 473

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Baggywrinkle said:
... it also doesn't mean that a well found boat with encapsulated keel and skeg hung rudder isn't going to get holed by a shipping container, rolled by a freak wave, have it`s slow draining cockpit swamped, have crew injured by the low slung boom or traveller/mainsheet in the cockpit, get run over by a tanker, set itself on fire due to ancient wiring, gas you in your sleep or blow up due to an outdated or leaking gas installation ... there are numerous ways you can meet your demise on the worlds oceans, and the type of rudder/keel you have is one small aspect of the whole.
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We are all equally at risk of hitting a shipping container or another boat. The boat with the encapsulated keel, skeg hung rudder and 1970s thickness of fibreglass is more likely to be able to limp to the next haulout than an AWB built recently. Our boom is above head-height, the traveller is outside the cockpit, we don't have gas on our boat and the engine is rigged as a bilge-pump by switching 1 valve. The wiring, I'll give you so we have a good smoke & CO alarm!

I experienced all kinds of disasters crossing the Atlantic and Pacific on other people's boats of all ages. I mitigate what I can, and that includes losing a keel or a rudder. We also carry more medical equipment than most do.

The point I was trying to make before is that the fact that many people's rudders and keels haven't fallen off doesn't mean that yours won't and the fact that some have, means that they *can*. If you're crossing an ocean you will be thousands of miles from help at some points so the consequences of these rare occurrences are amplified.

Baggywrinkle said:
My ideal would be a 45ft or larger AWB - as recent as I could afford, maybe a well kept 3-cabin Oceanis Clipper 473
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What is your current boat, if not your ideal?
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OK all great points thanks. I have thought about the keel falling off and the rudder failing as I am a scaredy cat! ahahah.

My theory is that as far as the keel is concerned I am not really aware of any AWB keels spontaneously failing. Cheeky Rafiki etc I think all had damage. So my idea would be to have the boat in the uk for a few years before any significant ocean voyages and obviously check that out when i buy.

As far as the rudder is concerned I would have a backup system. Maybe a hydrovane.
 
shaunksb said:
I honestly think the access to detailed weather on a crossing has completely changed the parameters of which type of boat you need.

On the West/East crossing I was on we only ever got the weather we ordered.

____________________________

PS Welcome back roblpm
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Well shaun thankyou very much I am touched! I've had a weird few years, illness in the family divorce etc. I now can see the light at the end of the tunnel.................!!!!

I have an IT background so the weather information will be top notch. In fact I think I may do a short weather course over the winter as I am quite interested in it!!
 
roaringgirl said:
We are all equally at risk of hitting a shipping container or another boat. The boat with the encapsulated keel, skeg hung rudder and 1970s thickness of fibreglass is more likely to be able to limp to the next haulout than an AWB built recently. Our boom is above head-height, the traveller is outside the cockpit, we don't have gas on our boat and the engine is rigged as a bilge-pump by switching 1 valve. The wiring, I'll give you so we have a good smoke & CO alarm!

I experienced all kinds of disasters crossing the Atlantic and Pacific on other people's boats of all ages. I mitigate what I can, and that includes losing a keel or a rudder. We also carry more medical equipment than most do.

The point I was trying to make before is that the fact that many people's rudders and keels haven't fallen off doesn't mean that yours won't and the fact that some have, means that they *can*. If you're crossing an ocean you will be thousands of miles from help at some points so the consequences of these rare occurrences are amplified.
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You do what you want, I'm not trying to stop you, or suggest that you haven't prepared your boat to a suitable standard, and I'm not questioning your sailing competence or experience.

What I am objecting to is the ever repeated myth that if a boat doesn't meet an arbitrary design criteria based on the opinion of an "old salt" then it is not a suitable base for a blue water cruiser.

Fixation on thickness of fibreglass is just another example of an outdated "comfort blanket" ... it's not the absolute thickness that counts, it's how stresses are distributed throughout the superstructure and if they are concentrated anywhere to produce stress points - something modern design tools allow the design team to analyse. Not available in the 70s, so they built based on what experience had taught them and what "felt" right. That's why so many early fibreglass designs simply copied the lines of their wooden predecessors and are overly heavy as a result.

Any inexperienced sailor reading your opinions may end up buying a wholly unsuitable boat, which is worn out and turns into a never ending money pit - or turns out to be not really what they needed and they end up missing out on modern comforts like bathing platforms, easy dinghy access, simplified sail handling, much better close quarters manoeuvrability and not to mention the ability to sail upright and not canted over at 30+ degrees all the time ... just because they were convinced by people like you that spade rudders and keels fall off at such a rate that it justifies buying a boat from last century over a more modern design.

Can you explain why a company like Hallberg Rassy has moved to balanced spade rudders, in some cases twins, so not even remotely protected by the keel.

Have they got it wrong? Are all owners of new HRs at mortal risk as a result?
 
In a year of living aboard and covering half the globe, I had one boat take on thousands of litres of green in the middle of the Atlantic, break 3 halyards - leading to me making several trips up the 80ft mast in the Atlantic swell, irretrievably jam the in-mast furler and get attacked by pirates and then call and orchestrate an international mayday to save 50 refugees. Another broke a furling line, ripped the main and caught fire, another got tangled in fishing lines a couple of hundred miles south of the Galapagos and yet another lost its spade rudder between Tonga and Fiji. Off the Columbian coast I surfed in a 35ft cat down 10m waves at night and got pooped dozens of times. I make no comment on peoples choices about coastal sailors or people bobbing about at the weekend once a month; but my first-hand experience tells me that shit can and does happen and I stand by my advice on mitigating the risks that you can.
 
roaringgirl said:
In a year of living aboard and covering half the globe, I had one boat take on thousands of litres of green in the middle of the Atlantic, break 3 halyards - leading to me making several trips up the 80ft mast in the Atlantic swell, irretrievably jam the in-mast furler and get attacked by pirates and then call and orchestrate an international mayday to save 50 refugees. Another broke a furling line, ripped the main and caught fire, another got tangled in fishing lines a couple of hundred miles south of the Galapagos and yet another lost its spade rudder between Tonga and Fiji. Off the Columbian coast I surfed in a 35ft cat down 10m waves at night and got pooped dozens of times. I make no comment on peoples choices about coastal sailors or people bobbing about at the weekend once a month; but my first-hand experience tells me that shit can and does happen and I stand by my advice on mitigating the risks that you can.
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Fine, but I think that what Baggy is saying is that the SCIENCE of making hulls has advanced more than you are prepared to admit.
Nothing wrong with mitigating risks, just be sure that the advice you give is up to date and correct.
 
Baggywrinkle said:
Can you explain why a company like Hallberg Rassy has moved to balanced spade rudders, in some cases twins, so not even remotely protected by the keel.

Have they got it wrong? Are all owners of new HRs at mortal risk as a result?
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I don't know, you'd have to get a non-sales-oriented answer from an HR naval architect. My cynical guess is that they're trading on the brand name and reputation to compete in a market that mostly doesn't care about crossing oceans. Interestingly this conversation has reminded me that when I lived in that world 10+ years ago, I met quite a few *old* (long keeled) HRs but no new ones. I also met an old one in Tahiti that had survived a night-time collision with a cargo ship. I'm just starting this time around, but have only met an *old* HR on the same journey so far...

If you don't think they're worth it, why do you trust the HR brand so much that you think their change in underwater profile choice demonstrates the reliability of fin and spade?
 
roaringgirl said:
I don't know, you'd have to get a non-sales-oriented answer from an HR naval architect. My cynical guess is that they're trading on the brand name and reputation to compete in a market that mostly doesn't care about crossing oceans. Interestingly this conversation has reminded me that when I lived in that world 10+ years ago, I met quite a few *old* (long keeled) HRs but no new ones. I also met an old one in Tahiti that had survived a night-time collision with a cargo ship. I'm just starting this time around, but have only met an *old* HR on the same journey so far...

If you don't think they're worth it, why do you trust the HR brand so much that you think their change in underwater profile choice demonstrates the reliability of fin and spade?
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They have a long history of building very capable offshore cruisers, that is what their brand and company is built on. They have bet the future of their company on more modern designs - which was necessary as most of their direct competition have gone bust - even at eye-watering prices.

The reluctance to accept modern materials, design methods and the simple fact that the world moves on is a shame because there are some very capable modern boats out there. At least you're not advocating that no-one should go to sea in anything that isn't made of steel, that's something I suppose.

Enjoy your boat, and let others enjoy theirs. ;)
 
Baggywrinkle said:
They have a long history of building very capable offshore cruisers, that is what their brand and company is built on. They have bet the future of their company on more modern designs - which was necessary as most of their direct competition have gone bust - even at eye-watering prices.

The reluctance to accept modern materials, design methods and the simple fact that the world moves on is a shame because there are some very capable modern boats out there. At least you're not advocating that no-one should go to sea in anything that isn't made of steel, that's something I suppose.

Enjoy your boat, and let others enjoy theirs. ;)
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I'm not stopping anyone doing anything. Everyone makes their own choices and suffers the consequences, whether they like that fact or not.

My original point was that for the same price as an early AWB, I've ended up with an oldskool overbuilt Swedish ketch, that's managed to get right around the planet once already - and that gives me a lot of reassurance as I take her for her second lap! See you out there!
 
roaringgirl said:
I'm not stopping anyone doing anything. Everyone makes their own choices and suffers the consequences, whether they like that fact or not.

My original point was that for the same price as an early AWB, I've ended up with an oldskool overbuilt Swedish ketch, that's managed to get right around the planet once already - and that gives me a lot of reassurance as I take her for her second lap! See you out there!
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So what consequences have you suffered from your choice? ... just for balance.

Perhaps you could list the downsides so anyone contemplating an older boat might be able to make a more informed decision concerning the pros and cons of 70s boats.
 
roaringgirl said:
In a year of living aboard and covering half the globe, I had one boat take on thousands of litres of green in the middle of the Atlantic, break 3 halyards - leading to me making several trips up the 80ft mast in the Atlantic swell, irretrievably jam the in-mast furler and get attacked by pirates and then call and orchestrate an international mayday to save 50 refugees. Another broke a furling line, ripped the main and caught fire, another got tangled in fishing lines a couple of hundred miles south of the Galapagos and yet another lost its spade rudder between Tonga and Fiji. Off the Columbian coast I surfed in a 35ft cat down 10m waves at night and got pooped dozens of times. I make no comment on peoples choices about coastal sailors or people bobbing about at the weekend once a month; but my first-hand experience tells me that shit can and does happen and I stand by my advice on mitigating the risks that you can.
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roblpm said:
OK this looks good apart from the 3 cabins. I know someone else said go bigger but I am post divorce....... I wonder about a 36' 2 cabin version of this........... or something similar. AVS from RYA is 123.

So we are getting to the right area.
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Well there's this ... at not a bad price but unfortunately in Grenada and sold - 2 cabin versions are quite rare. It obviously has no right to be there as it's keel or rudder should have fallen off mid Atlantic, but there you go.

2003 Bavaria 36 Cruiser Power New and Used Boats for Sale -

I have a 3 cabin version of the Bavaria 36, and it comes in extremely handy for either taking friends/couples sailing or providing petulant teenagers with their own space. Don't know your personal circumstances but my boat has been fantastic for taking my sons and their girlfriends sailing, or just providing 2 friends with their own space. When a cabin is unoccupied it makes a great storage area for windsurf equipment, inflateable Kayaks, SUP boards etc. ... when you drop to the 2 cabin version, you usually get a slightly bigger head and a deep cockpit locker instead.
 
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