trailer sailer and a camper

Any boat and motorhome combo' will be a bit of a pain to tow around IMO, but among trailer sailers I think you'd be hard pushed to beat a Swift 18 or if you can find one a Mamba 19 - when I tried googling the latter, a very nice slippery hulled lift keeler of the 70's, all I got was gin palaces !

https://www.swift18.org/
 
Buy yourself a very good towing vehicle and buy a trailer sailor. You can use the boat as your camper. Depending on your budget you could buy up to about 26 feet long, like a MacGregor 26M or BayCruiser 26. Both would give you plenty of accommodation compared to a motorhome and be very suitable for Med coastal cruising.
 
One acquaintance towed a 21ft lift keel around Oz with his motor home. Apparently very successful. Boat cam back pretty dirty on hull. But he would have towed 20+k km. 2 more acquaintances towed trailer sailers around Oz and camped in the boat in caravan parks etc. One a Maxi 26 one a Farr 850. So both big boats for towing one using a truck and one a Land Cruiser. Again both doing 20+K Km. Both apparently happy with the adventure. But oz is well set up for launching ramps for boats. Availability of public facilities might be the problem and i have no knowledge of these. good luck olewill
 
Concerto said:
Buy yourself a very good towing vehicle and buy a trailer sailor. You can use the boat as your camper. Depending on your budget you could buy up to about 26 feet long, like a MacGregor 26M or BayCruiser 26. Both would give you plenty of accommodation compared to a motorhome and be very suitable for Med coastal cruising.
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Presumably one leaves the Macrgregor on the slip and has the towing vehicle fitted out with buoyancy and rig a la Clarkson / May as the sailing vessel ? :)
 
We towed our 21 footer with ease using our transit camper van. The van was effectively a standard MWB transit with the lower load hauling gear ratios and no great overhang at the back.
Many motor homes seem to have very long rear overhangs so one wonders how much nose weight they can manage?
 
pcatterall said:
We towed our 21 footer with ease using our transit camper van. The van was effectively a standard MWB transit with the lower load hauling gear ratios and no great overhang at the back.
Many motor homes seem to have very long rear overhangs so one wonders how much nose weight they can manage?
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I am preparing to tow a small car on a trailer behind mine. Nose weights are typically 50 to 150 kg (https://www.caravanclub.co.uk/media/12354614/noseweights-mo__2_.pdf) and mine is around the lower end of this range. Our van does have a long rear overhang but in test driving I cannot tell the trailer is there - absolutely no change in the steering feel.
 
Apart from considerations about the nose weight, a long overhang is a boon for manoeuvering in reverse.
With a car having a small distance between rear axle and towing hitch, to get a short sideways moving of the trailer nose the front of the car, because of the leverage, must offset a much longer way one side or the other, which can be inconvenient or even impossible in confined places.
Moreover, in ahead, the trailer inevitably cuts the corners in bends. The shorter the overhang, the larger the distance between the tracks of trail and car inner wheels. In an ideal world, if the distance car rear axle-towing hitch is equal the distance towing hitch-trailer axle, the trailer wheels run right in the track of the car's.
Of course this is not practically achievable.
 
Aren't you making life very complicated? Why not do a campervan tour and then sell it and get a cruising yacht (or vice versa)?
If I were going to have a boat and van at the same time I'd want the boat to be easy to deal with. I'd sacrifice the cabin and go for something along the lines of a Wayfarer.
 
I have had campers in the past and toured europe several times in them, great for bringing along the dog kids etc and beach gear etc.

now kids grown and wiffe and I are looking to the future, I want a boat in the Med but marina costs are prohibitive, especially is you only get a few weeks use and also you are stuck to one place/ destination unless you are very organised.

We also enjoy mooching along the coast and stopping off in smaller out of the way places, and having the freedom to up sticks and move along when we please. But we want to do it in the type comfort of a Motor home that we could not afford in the past. we will eventually buy a place there and hopefully bring our boat down there and cruise the med from there but until then we want to tour and experience places so we can make informed choices on our eventual purchase of bricks and mortar.

There are many places to leave a boat on a trailer in storage which are cheaper than marinas/boat yards. I would leave the boat there for the remainder of the year and fly down for a few weekends to make use of it, and then move to a new area the following year..

towing and travelling is not really a problem, I am well used to towing diggers and trailers including long distance on the continent.

My real concern is practical in terms of finding an A class that will take a 2.5 to 3 ton towing capacity probably with a 250kg nose weight,, If this is not possible then I may go for an iveco van and convert that but the space in a converted van is just not very nice.

Is there a reason some trailers are twin axle and others are not, even under biggish boats??

I really would not like a single axle trailer on a motorway...

A hunter 260...https://www.apolloduck.com/boat.phtml?id=546874 looks nice or a mcgregor 26 http://www.yachtworld.com/boats/1994/Macgregor-26-3108937/United-Kingdom#.Whn9Kkpl_IU

There must be others that might suit... require a proper heads and some bit of headroom if possible....
 
Neither of these boats has standing headroom below, that is why I earlier suggested the MacGregor 26M (newest model, now called the Tartan 26) and the BayCruiser 26.

The MacGregor you linked to is a MacGregor 26C, which only has standing headroom under the pop up top. They also made, slightly later, the MacGregor 26X which IIRC has standing headroom. The C version has a swing center plate, but the X and M have lifting center plate.

Sorry I cannot comment about the Hunter.
 
Thanks for that, Good suggestions..

there are many unknowns in this situation but two knowns are:,,, it will not be new... or even a nearly new boat.. it will not have a 50hp engine on the back..

The Hunter 26 would be my favourite at the mo but time will tell, suspect there must be several French models that would be more easily found actually touring along the coast... or on http://www.annoncesbateau.com/ or the Spainish equivalent

5k to 7k is the starting point (it will go upwards I know)
 
Many motorhomes are front wheel drive and have trouble on flat wet grass, especially with a fairly lightweight racing car trailer behind - ask me how I know! I shudder to think how they'd cope on a wet slipway with a boat and trailer in tow!
 
Kingfisher 3 said:
Many motorhomes are front wheel drive and have trouble on flat wet grass, especially with a fairly lightweight racing car trailer behind - ask me how I know! I shudder to think how they'd cope on a wet slipway with a boat and trailer in tow!
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That's a good point. Mine, Ducato based, is dreadful on even the slightest slope on wet grass. Tow hitch on the front for launching?
 
from research I think to get a good towing capacity you need a twin wheel Iveco rear wheel drive base vehicle,

renting boats on the fly is too expensive time consuming and messy....unless organised in advance and that takes away the freedom to come and go or not as one pleases.

I have a part complete camper which was originally laid out when kids were a consideration and which I was going to sell but I may just have a new look at it.... I had not realised its towing abilities, but a conversion never gets to the "Niceness" of a factory build and the iveco vans are really narrow.

launching on a slip is a matter of a long enough winch cable and good jockey wheel, besides slips in the med are not slippery as there is virtually no tide to speak of.
 
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