Trailer Sailor - Which one?

LONG_KEELER said:
The trouble with many trail-able yachts is being able to sit upright down below.
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You must mean that folk can ONLY sit up down below? Both the First 18 and Copland 20 footer have sitting headroom, and you can see easily over the cabin top when sat in the cockpit.

OK sailing a smaller boat is different to sailing a 35' twin aft cabin AWB, but I found it just as much fun and the fun/£ factor is higher, especially if a 35' AWB is out of your league.
 
I went through this last year, and will repeat what I was advised. Don't get hung up on a marque, look at anything in your size range, chances are you will find a cracking little boat you have never heard of :)
I was thinking of silhouettes, pirate express, skipper 17, caprice, sailfish 18 and lysanders. Ended up with a Bradwell 18 for £1200 with load of kit, almost new mariner 6 outboard, and a crappy knackered trailer. Still, the trailer got her from Essex to Cumbria. If I replace all the rollers it will be fine.
I live in Keswick and the boat is in Maryport, your welcome to a look at her or a shot of her if the weather/tides permit.
She feels very solid and safe in the sea for a wee boat.
 
For me a trailer sailor needs to have a mast that is easy to put up and down, I would list this as a must have, my first boat being a 7m Pandora on a trailer brought in 2014, always had a crane lower and raise the mast, some would say that's easy to do why a crane, I don't agree, 25ft. Enjoy searching for what you want,but don't forget about the mast, can save you a lot of money having one simple to raise and lower.
 
Comments on buying a trailer sailor. Yes make sure you have head room when sitting inside. Very uncomfortable otherwise.
Do not discount a fin keel or bilge keel boat. Provided you have steep enough water entry you can disconnect the trailer to push in deep enough on the end of a rope or draw bar extension to float the boat off and on.
Lift keels come in a few different styles with various draw backs.
A swing keel going up into a CB case in cabin is most intrusive to cabin area.
A swing keel going into a shallow long keel cabin floor is flat over the keel (good) but stub keel makes draught deeper so a bit more difficult to get onto a trailer.
A lift keel comes up into cabin but not so intrusive gives very shallow draught.
As said the total weight will dictate what kind of vehicle you tow it with or max size of boat.
As said the trailer will give a lot of maintenance concerns and perhaps you should buy or build a trailer then put a boat on it. Though the trailer rollers must suit the boat.
Incidently it seems many in UK advocate the use of a launching trolley under the boat that goes on the trailer. Yet around here everyone dunks their trailer.
Lastly before (or after) you buy a small TS try the pull down test for self righting. secure the bow and stern then pull down on a halyard to measure the force it requires for you to hold the boat mast horizontal. Around 20kg might be a good number. this can give you confidence in its self righting ability.
Just a few thoughts olewill
 
steve yates said:
Hi also thought the little leisure 17, the fox cub and particularly the seawytch looked great.
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The Leisure 17 is a cracking boat, and they go for less than they deserve at the moment, I've seen good ones going for a few hundred £.

Also check out the very near identical Sunstar 18 by the same designer, Arthur Howard.

Fox Cub seems a good boat.

The Sea Wytch rather goes for accomodation than sailing performance.

If you can find a Hunter 19 / Europa, either the fin or shallower draught triple keel versions will give truly ace fun and sailing performance ( spirited with unbeatable handling, rather than an overcanvassed dragster ), as long as accomodation is not important.

Having said that David Blagden sailed Hunter 19 ( the Europa was a later version with slightly more space and a different deck ) ' Willing Griffin ' across in the 1972 OSTAR, smallest boat ever to take part - his book ' Very Willing Griffin ' is much sought after.

The designer of the Hunter 19 / Europa along with a lot of other good boats :) is the only one to get a dedicated ' community ' site on here; go to the dark blue band above the forum headings to ' The Genius Of Oliver Lee '.

There is a good, active owners association for them, if interested ask ' Little Rascal ' on here.
 
I have a 26 ft trailer yacht which I often trail, rig and sail single handed.
I can rig and launch in about 35 minutes after arriving at the launching ramp or 45 minutes with inexperienced help. :)
The class of boat i have in NZ is not known in the UK, but the trailer sailor problems are universal.
Its all about getting your systems right. It sounds like you are a bit of an engineer, so you may appreciate some of the following:
I have tried to minimise or eliminate as many tasks as possible when rigging/ unrigging.
My boat is water ballasted which makes her light for towing but a bit tender in heavy weather. Many trailer sailors are a bit tender => Get your reefing systems easy to rig and use.
My mast is 9.7 metres long/tall. The back of the mast is supported on a pole for transport. I fitted the pole with a roller to make it easy to push the mast backwards to the point where you connect the mast foot to the pivoting step. I have a simple ex- boat trailer winch which hooks onto the Spinnaker becket. from there the rope goes through a block on the Pulpit and back to the jib halyard. Raising/lowering the mast is simply a matter of turning the handle and providing a little centralisation guidance. Once up i use a turnbuckle to connect and tension the forestay. It actually easier for one person as a second person usually want to push or pull something unnecessarily.
All halyards, topping lifts and etc are long enough to stay fully threaded back to the cockpit even when the mast is down and forward and stowed for towing. The kicker tackle is fixed to the mast step and only unhooked from the boom. It lives on the cabin roof otherwise. Jib sheets and spinnaker sheets stay reeved and simply clipped off .
I travel with rudder and outboard shipped but locked in position so they don't swing about.
I built the trailer so that the fully submersible LED lights are on the trailer, not on a separate light board as is often the case here.
Time and motion study: eliminate as many tasks as possible. I want to go sailing, not spend the day rigging the damn thing!
My boat requires keel support on the trailer, so i have a conventional central roller set. My enhancement was a 200x 50 plank each side of the rollers with a 30 degree chamfer on each inside edge. As well as providing a path to walk down, the chamfered planks ensure that it never (almost)fails to centralise the boat when retrieving.
I can rig or unrig my boat single handed in literally half the time that a friend and his mate can rig/ unrig their 20 ft boat.
Bigger doesn't have to mean more difficult. I am 57 and no gorilla, nothing on my boat requires brute strength.
But with a bigger boat I have the advantage of comfortable accommodation for 2 or three full sized people with standing headroom under the main hatch and a fully separate heads compartment.
Thanks to the large numbers of powerboats on trailers, in Australia and NZ marinised trailer hub and stub sets are readily available and cheap as chips. These are provided with Galvanised components and special seals. I fully submerse my trailer every launch/retrieval which is about weekly in the summer months. I expect to replace a bearing set about once every year or two.
Even so and even for me, a trained engineer, trailers are the bane of trailer sailoring. In NZ and i suspect the UK, you can pay as little for a trailer sailor in the 18 - 22 ft range as you would pay for the trailer it is sitting on if the trailer was in perfect condition.
i.e Boat trailer for sale with free boat on it!

Finally, with the boat market as it is it is probably cheaper to buy a boat with the bells and whistles you will end up with anyway than to buy a cheaper boat and add all those things.
e.g Lighting, portapotti, new rigging, new sails, squabs, compass, VHF, Tillerpilot, Epirb or PLB, lifejackets, cooker - the list goes on and on and is part of the fun.
Whatever you do though don't lose sight of the objective which is to go sailing and have fun!
Good luck.
 
What about a Westerly Nimrod.

I had one as my first big boat after an Enterprise dinghy. It was fast, easy to manoeuvre, simple to get on and off the trailer. I towed it behind a normal car easily.
Very basic down below, but two 6 foot bunks is all you need really. :)

My first post on here....
 
Welcome to the forums Gixer,

the Nimrod would certainly score well on being relatively easily handled ashore, and good performance.

Not too sure it would convert many hesitant girlfriends to cruising - but it might be a useful aid in sorting out time wasters with ideas of sailing being laying on deck with a G & T !
 
What sort of sailing characteristics is the OP looking for? Our first boat was a leisure 17 - absolute jewel of a boat as a first boat. Very forgiving and reassuring, but not what you'd call "quick". Our second was an Evolution 22. That was a very different animal. Very fast, exhilerating lake boat - especially with a reasonably heavy crew on the weather rail. Quite a bit more time to raise the mast and rig it though. Useless in the sea if it got choppy. Towed like a complete pig (which surprised me as it sat so low on the trailer, being a lift-keeler). Excellent accommodation because it was so beamy.

I think it's worth going a bit below the rated towing cpacity of your car if you're going to use the car to launch and recover on slipways.
 
The police are very hot on legal towing weight of vehicle V weight of boat & trailer nowadays - beats fighting proper crime which might require brain cells & effort - so be careful as it takes quite a seriously big & heavy vehicle to tow a trailer sailer, do check the figures.
 
My favourite "I'd like one of those" is a First 18 trailer sailer. Nippy looking boats where the accommodation seems ok and the rig looks handleable by one person on the trailer before launch. The only downside would be that this age of boat probably won't be designed to plane, unlike more modern designs.

And on the trailer sailing front, I never enjoyed actually trailing my old E-Boat; it was just a means to an end. My old Peugeot 406 could never get it up the slipway either so make sure you get a boat and trailer combination that allows for this unless you plan to use a boat lift.
 
Small and light if it is just you. Bigger and comfier if it is you and wife and kids.

Beware rotten trailers.

Think about how long it will take to rig and launch. Do you want to battle local jet skiiers for access to the slip way. ?

Think about the kind of sailing you want to do. Day trip to the pub? Overnighter with a tent on the beach? Sleeping on board? If you are not sure then maybe a gull or similar dinghy is worth a punt. Should be able to sell her and move on fairly easily.

A project 20 ft trailer sailer might be a money pit though . yes it will be good to have her on the drive. But when you come to sell will you ever get the money back. It can be a fickle market. The bigger you go the more money it takes to get her seaworthy.

I'm not saying you should not get a trailer sailer. I think your points are valid. But ponder lling and hard about the kind of sailing you want and who will do it with you.

I went the other way in he end and bought a 27 footer, sharing the costs with my sister and brother in law. It works for us. If it had just been me I'd probably have gone for a gull or knckered wayfarer or drasombe if I could have found one cheap enough.

Good luck and have fun.
 
Just as a quick follow up. I'm currently looking at where you can launch from here in the UK. For where we live I can imagine towing the boat over to Anglesey or Abersoch in North Wales. Are there launch places to be found there where you can just turn up and put into the water or does it have to be arranged/paid for?

TIA

Adri
 
adri said:
Just as a quick follow up. I'm currently looking at where you can launch from here in the UK. For where we live I can imagine towing the boat over to Anglesey or Abersoch in North Wales. Are there launch places to be found there where you can just turn up and put into the water or does it have to be arranged/paid for?

TIA

Adri
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http://www.boatlaunch.co.uk/
 
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