What was the first boat you bought with your own cash?

Shipmate Senior in 1982, first season on the Trent just outside Newark, then to Blakeney (free mooring). Then first child came along and no more sailing for 10 years,. Then a Lightning dinghy in Lagos, Nigeria.
 
A Griffiths Water Witch ketch. The boat was built in ply and came in bits with a good bit of rot in some of her ribs and decks and the keel bolts (as I found out) were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. The bilge keels had gone missing and her rigging lay in a pile under the boat. She had an old air-cooled Lister that had to be started with a crank and sounded much like an old tractor.

Amazingly, she had a set of brand new sails, including a spinnaker, as the wife of the previous owner worked for a local sailmaker.

With much youthful enthusiasm I managed to put her back together and cruised her for a couple of years.
I didn't have a lot of money, but I was able to trade my labour by building a couple of teak doors for a guy with a Mobo. He had a fibre glassing business and he glassed the leaky decks for me. I did the same deal with another chap who was a welder and he made me a new set of bilge keels.

I was terribly exited when I finally relaunched. All the folk in the fixer-upper yard walked with me behind the old travel lift, like we were following a hearse at a funeral. She was launched stern first and, once I got the old Lister going, I had to turn her in the narrow lane. She was the biggest boat I had ever steered until then and I was frantically ordering everyone around, to keep an eye out there or push off here. The old salt who was sitting next to me finally leaned over and said, "Relax laddie, there's plenty o' room, she ain't the Queen Mary."

Twenty years later, I met her again, at anchor in a cove, and had a long chat with her new owners who were living aboard at the time.
 
A 1936 Eversons 2 ton 19' Bermudan sloop 'Black cat' which I bought in 1977 , attracted to her as she was a proper yacht in minature. She had a rotten transom and mast step, leaky decks and chain plates almost rusted through, all fixed in a mudberth at Landermere quay beside the remains of theThames barge Rose. In those days, in my 20s, no repair was too much to tackle, but it must have been ok because she's still sailing on the Deben and looking lovely, although the original Stuart Turner P5m I had refurbished is long gone.
 
First boat was a Lark cost about £300 in 1978 was a very early one sail no 15 , towed the boat with my mgb all over the country from Kent .Was great fun sold it about 1998 for what I paid for it .
 
My first own boat (If windsurfers don't count) was an Egat, 15' Beach cat bought at an auction of abandoned boats at the Capital Area Yacht Club in Muscat. The sails and trampoline where rotted from the sun and the trailer wheels and one wheel hub was missing. I had a replacement trampoline made by a local upholsterer, made a replacement wheel hub on the ship I was working on, bought some wheels from a scrapyard and a new set of sails made at Fylde sails in Fleetwood.
And eventually some fun learning how to sail my first cat from the Sultans Armed Forces Beach Club.
 
Some great stories on here.

Hopefully, the many viewers to these forums who have never sailed before might
think about giving sailing a go.

It might also help to keep the values of our existing boats up . ;)
 
Laminar Flow said:
A Griffiths Water Witch ketch. The boat was built in ply and came in bits with a good bit of rot in some of her ribs and decks and the keel bolts (as I found out) were hanging on by the skin of their teeth. The bilge keels had gone missing and her rigging lay in a pile under the boat. She had an old air-cooled Lister that had to be started with a crank and sounded much like an old tractor.

Amazingly, she had a set of brand new sails, including a spinnaker, as the wife of the previous owner worked for a local sailmaker.

With much youthful enthusiasm I managed to put her back together and cruised her for a couple of years.
I didn't have a lot of money, but I was able to trade my labour by building a couple of teak doors for a guy with a Mobo. He had a fibre glassing business and he glassed the leaky decks for me. I did the same deal with another chap who was a welder and he made me a new set of bilge keels.

I was terribly exited when I finally relaunched. All the folk in the fixer-upper yard walked with me behind the old travel lift, like we were following a hearse at a funeral. She was launched stern first and, once I got the old Lister going, I had to turn her in the narrow lane. She was the biggest boat I had ever steered until then and I was frantically ordering everyone around, to keep an eye out there or push off here. The old salt who was sitting next to me finally leaned over and said, "Relax laddie, there's plenty o' room, she ain't the Queen Mary."

Twenty years later, I met her again, at anchor in a cove, and had a long chat with her new owners who were living aboard at the time.
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Water Witch .... always liked them ...

Sadly I watched one rot away in a small creek of Farlington Marsh Langstone. Name - Freya - she had just been hauled up the small creek on a really high tide and then just left.
I tried to find the owner to see about rescuing her but yard owner said they were not interested to talk to anyone. I noted that later someone tried moving her but by then she was so rotten that she leaked and sank in the creek. I suggested they pass plastic sheet under her to at least stop the leaks and try to get her afloat again but they just broke her up to clear the channel.
 
If we not counting dinghy my first real sailing boat was a Alacrity 18 my two children and I use to spend every weekend sailing that boat up and down the riven Alde ,
There was no talk of what anchor was best used in them days ,
With a lifting keel we use to sailing it into the mud bank with the keel down until was was stuck , have lunch then haul up the keel and sail off we went .
At night anchoring Butley creek or working our way up to Snape and lying on the wall. returning back to our mooring buoy on a Sunday night .
I could go on but I won't .
Great memories...
 
sailaboutvic said:
If we not counting dinghy my first real sailing boat was a Alacrity 18 my two children and I use to spend every weekend sailing that boat up and down the riven Alde ,
There was no talk of what anchor was best used in them days ,
With a lifting keel we use to sailing it into the mud bank with the keel down until was was stuck , have lunch then haul up the keel and sail off we went .
At night anchoring Butley creek or working our way up to Snape and lying on the wall. returning back to our mooring buoy on a Sunday night .
I could go on but I won't .
Great memories...
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My dinghies were all real sailing boats.....;)
 
dunedin said:
And it is interesting how many started out buying a sailing dinghy and how many started straight into keel boats.
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I surprise how many people we talk to these days that not even very sailed before and buy a 35/40 for boat .
And how many have done no type of course and plain to sail around the world.
You have to wonder how much damage that's done to other boat as well as there own boat .
 
sailaboutvic said:
I surprise how many people we talk to these days that not even very sailed before and buy a 35/40 for boat .
And how many have done no type of course and plain to sail around the world.
You have to wonder how much damage that's done to other boat as well as there own boat .
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I bought an 2CV car of a musician who was living in a caravan with wife and kid on a farm in Norfolk. He mentioned he was building a Wharram cat to sail around the world. Showed me the one hull he had built and it looked OK. He was having a bit of trouble with the plans so I gave him some help. While talking, I asked about his sailing experience. Zero. Never been out in any type of craft.
 
Although I was brought up to sailing via knock aboutdinghies to some degree it the character of the man or woman to how they get on,much of the actual sailing bit can be picked up ina week end and as long as they apply some knowledge gleaned from books basic stuff like anchour ing will be trial an error like the appreciation of tides etc and today a small course should put them on the right footing They certainly won’t get lost with all the latest electronic stuff,stuff which I am afraid I find difficult to master
 
DownWest said:
I bought an 2CV car of a musician who was living in a caravan with wife and kid on a farm in Norfolk. He mentioned he was building a Wharram cat to sail around the world. Showed me the one hull he had built and it looked OK. He was having a bit of trouble with the plans so I gave him some help. While talking, I asked about his sailing experience. Zero. Never been out in any type of craft.
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Electronic devices as turning every sailor into experts over night , until some thing goes wrong.
One case last year some one posted on a med sailing forum that he plain to anchor out side a marina as the cost of going in was too much to bare what did other think?
a list of replies followed telling him he be fine it may be a bit uncomfortable, what none did was taken in consideration what happening to the weather, I guess I must had turned the thinking of the on coming winds that where going to happen within the next 12 hours followed by a couple of other cruisers .
To cut the story short, he decided to bit the bullet and go in ,
his next posting was to thank us who changed his mind for him.
He said if he stay out side by early morning they would had lost there boat and maybe their lifes , then waves was hitting the sea wall so hard it took most of the top of the wall .
The storm lasted 3 days .
You have to wonder how if any experience them who was advising him to stay at anchor had , when it was quite clear what the weather was going to do and where he was anchored , with a shallow bar over the entrance of the marina they would had no chance of getting in once the seas build up .
This is one case , each day there posting about so you think it's ok me to do this or that ?
If they have to ask these question one have to wonder what are they doing on a boat .
These are cruisers in large boat not weekend sailing going up and down a river .
 
Lightwave395 said:
Interesting, Heron's and GP14's seem to figure here a lot :)
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The first boat I sailed was a Heron - not mine, but my Dad's. My brother and I started out as ballast and nominal jib sheet handlers, and graduated to being useful jib-sheet handlers until we could helm her and (in our teens) sail her single-handed. I have many happy memories of sailing a Heron! Some of them include being abused by fishermen on a narrow river, who couldn't understand why, if we could stay in the middle of the river when heading one way, we couldn't do the same going the other!
 
sailaboutvic said:
I surprise how many people we talk to these days that not even very sailed before and buy a 35/40 for boat .
And how many have done no type of course and plain to sail around the world.
You have to wonder how much damage that's done to other boat as well as there own boat .
Click to expand...
Chay Blyth managed it, but I agree. I get nervous when I see people who are clearly out of their skill zone when handling 35'ers and who have quite obviously not spent much of their youth keeping out of the way of their parents by messing about on the water.
 
Kestrel 22 with only one bilge keel attached, guy said the other one was in his garage and he would fetch it next day ? in the end I fabricated 2 .
 
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