Topic: I should buy a boat (Read 2284 times)

There's a lot of nice 26' - 30' boats in the 10k to 25k range.  The economy is still considered bad (obviously), so there's a large price range depending on how desperate people are to sell.  Even the worst structurally sound boats (Macgregor 26') people take to the Bahamas and Costa Rica, so as long as you don't plan to cross the Atlantic or Pacific, you have a lot of options.  The smallest ship I would want to live on for extended periods of time is a 30'.  A 26' that can cross an ocean (like a Contessa or something) will probably cost around the same as a 30-32' that isn't good for doing so (such as maybe a Catalina or Hunter), but the bigger boat would be much nicer for living on.


The following is a picture of a Catalina or Hunter that you would probably be able to find for 15-24k while in good condition:

http://www.boattrader.com/listing/1990-Hunter-30-646459

You could not do any worse than simply plan a trip on a sail boat first. Google sailboat rental with crew. If you can manage not to be too sick for a few days onboard then you could contemplate buying a boat. Although owning a boat is a money pit for many people. If you are not committed to use it a couple of times a month then even 20k is too much.

Also Google F-Boat trimaran.

I never said to get a BCY 80. I said to focus on a cat instead. I have no idea how poor or how rich anyone reading this is. But I like beautiful boats. Why would I want to google image an ugly cat when I can illustrate my post with a BCY?

Also you need a crew of 4 people to manage such beast. The OP was clear about a boat one or two people could manage easily.

What would Ibe looking at if I wanted a coatal sail boat, not per say an ocean crosser.

Something I can go up and down the east coast, bahamas, puerto rico ect

And maybe if im balsy maybe sail to california.

Would 20k cover this?

As a guy who has never once been on a sailboat, what training will I need and what is the average costs to make a land kook a sea kook.

You must be joking with this BCY 80. This is approximately a $5 million boat. I found a higher model of theirs, BCY 95, for sale for almost $7 mill (used). That's a bit too much even for an early adopter

There are no perfect all weather sail boats. They all have weakness and strength.  What I like with the cat is the way it handles in shallow water. You may not be crossing the ocean in bad weather all the time, but you would try to be as close possible to land a lot for food, water many times. Some monohulls can deal in shallow water too obviously.


Those links are for all reading this thread.

http://westcoastmultihulls.com/multihull-vs-monohull-advantages/


Safety – Unsinkability
There are many aspects to safety where catamarans and trimarans shine. Often overlooked is the safety margin introduced with level sailing (see above). It is much easier to keep crew aboard in rough weather when the boat stays level and is pitching less. Large cockpit spaces keep crew well away from the lifelines as well.

The speed of a multihull is another safety factor, as with decent weather information it’s relatively easy to sail around severe weather systems before they can bear down on you. Should something go horribly awry, and the boat get flipped (VERY rare – see below), the lack of ballast, and additional positive flotation, means that nearly every catamaran and trimaran produced in the last few decades will remain on the surface of the water, rightside up or not, until a rescue can be made. Nearly all cruising cats and tris have a substantial amount of reserve buoyancy, in the form of closed-cell foam, stashed in the nooks and crannies of the boat. Because of this, most could literally be cut into pieces and all pieces would still float. This makes fire your biggest safety concern aboard a cat. And the anchor windlass, but that’s a story for another day.

Can my catamaran or trimaran flip over?
This is theoretically possible, and has happened in very rare heavy-weather situations when EVERY vessel is in distress. It takes very high winds, too much sail (see reefing, above), and large breaking waves to flip a modern cruising cat or tri. Multihull sailors find it reassuring to know that their cat or tri will remain on the surface, as a big liferaft and spotting target, while ballasted monohulls caught in the same situation are more likely to end up on the bottom of the sea, with their crew bobbing around (if they are lucky) in an inflatable liferaft.

Motoring Performance/Maneuverability
Cruising catamarans and trimarans, with their easily driven hull forms and light weight, enjoy excellent fuel efficiency when compared to monohulls, and track very straight. Cats almost always have twin engines, set many feet apart, which allow for tremendous control in tight situations. In fact, the boat can be spun in place or crabbed sideways without any way on. Try that on a monohull. Prop walk is minimal or nonexistent as well, and the redundancy of a second engine is appreciated should a mechanical issue arise underway.
Nearly all trimarans have just one engine, so the differences there are slight.



http://www.aeroyacht.com/catamaran-learning-center-2/catamaran-shallow-draft/

http://www.distantshores.ca/boatblog_files/category-southerly-boats.php









Anyway I can still enjoy my neighbor's Dufour T7 while dreaming of my perfect cat...

 

It isn't really that simple to say that cats are better than monohulls.  Weather that will flip a cat might just have the monohull sway down then recover since the cat's natural center of balance is updside down.  Cats also seem to require more babysitting to prevent this flipping from occurring.  Let's say you're crossing an entire ocean by yourself and obviously have to go to sleep at some point.  With a monohull, you can toss out a drogue, then as long as you aren't in huge waves, you're probably not going to wake up in a bad situation. 

With the cat, sailing alone is more risky because you really want to have someone at the helm unless the sea is entirely flat.  There are cats you might not have problems in, but those cats are generally insanely expensive compared to a monohull that you can do the same crossing with.  Etap monohulls are supposedly also unsinkable due to having 2 hulls with foam between.

I would personally rather have a cat, but going to sleep in a small one in non-ideal weather conditions would be scary.

Top 9 Catamaran Advantages

http://www.time-for-a-catamaran-adventure.com/catamaran-advantages.html



Try to get enough BTC for a cat instead of a monohull.

Yes it's probably a $200k+ boat, but If I were to live on it I wouldn't need a house or a car, so buying it would mean liquidating almost everything I have now. It's possible to find similar ones much cheaper, they just need a refresh but it's OK, I'd probably have more than enough time to work on it
A small house in my area costs at least a $100k and it's usually a price of an empty space you have to redecorate.

For anyone considering a blue water sailing trip. I recommend this book.
Covers everything you need to know A-Z

http://www.amazon.com/Voyagers-Handbook-Essential-Guide-Cruising/dp/0071437657/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426996447&sr=8-1&keywords=blue+water+cruising

Not sure who makes that from the picture, but it looks like a pretty large boat, somewhere between 40' to 50'?  To get a boat that size that's actually in ocean crossing condition would probably cost you $50k rock bottom price, and then probably up to $100k for any you can actually find.  The word affordable is relative, but the price of a cheap house isn't exactly that affordable heh.

Boat prices can be deceiving because if you bought a new mast for that boat, it would cost $30,000 new.  So if you found a $30,000 boat with bad mast, it can actually be worth basically 0 haha.

You mean the Somali pirates? The ones that hunted Tom Hanks? They were fighting them with water hoses if I remember

That had to be one hell of an eccentric.
Moving a boat that big 800 km inland would probably cost me more than the boat itself.

This baby would satisfy me completely and it is fairly affordable.

if all that were to happen you would be fucked have you heard about the pirates nowadays ... you should buy a battleship not a boat

The boat is the ultimate source of unsolved mysteries:

http://sailinganarchy.com/2013/10/26/all-is-lost/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU

I could live pretty comfortably in a remote cabin, given that I had a serious hunting rifle, shotgun and 22LR, a couple handguns of large caliber, knives, rope, a truckload or so of solar panels, maybe an old style satellite dish with a motor drive, couple satellite phones, stash of gold in the cave behind the waterfall, eighteen barrels of Bourbon, a thumbdrive with 42,000 works of fiction and engineering, six quadcopters to scout the perimeter fence line, five carefully picked dogs, four cases of barbecue sauce, three women, two canoes, and one flashlight.

In comparison to what?  Being in a house where the EPA starts to monitor your electric usage, NSA monitoring your internet, and taxman saying you need to pay property tax, which means you don't own the house, you're basically just renting it.  Yea, they can tax your income or other assets, but it's a lot harder to try and tax the ocean the boat sits on.

Then of course, there's obviously more freedom of travel, since the gas can stop pumping at any time due to some kind of currency crisis.  You don't need gas for a sailboat, although it is useful in many circumstances.  Boats also offers many creative ways to get yourself killed, which is obviously a form of freedom from a nanny state.

The fact that you can survive without having to go to a grocery store is also obviously a checkmark for freedom.  So yea, a boat is going to be an objective increase in freedom for most people.


It depends.  Most people that own a 26' - 40' boat are usually more self sufficient in nature (although people owning 200' boats might not be), and aren't just going to turn into Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome when they already have food, water, and shelter themselves.  People on land missing many of these things might be more inclined to do so.  Yea, piracy would increase, so you're not going to want to just sit out in the middle of the ocean for no reason, you would just identify a safe place to sail to and go there and live right offshore obviously.  You would also want to identify and talk to anyone near you and probably form some kind of agreement to not kill each other and probably defend against other people trying to do so.



It's not realistic to pretend everyone on the planet with a boat is instantly going to turn into a Somali pirate should an economic catastrophe occur.  There's not going to be large ships of inner city, rap music listening people attacking you.  99.99% of those are going to be on land.  If all you have is a 30' to 40' boat, chances are that anyone you run into is going to have the same or better.  If you have a 100'-200' boat, then yea, someone might eventually get greedy and try to take it.


You would probably be ok if it's a large distance from any populated area, but maybe it would be miserable there for a long period of time, and maybe the guy in the boat just drove the thing to where things are still normal.


In case you didn't notice, a boat can go to all of those places? lol

Some years back I went to look at a phone some guy was selling used.  It was basically an antique at that time - an analog cell phone that took up an entire, heavy briefcase.  Seemed interesting.   Anyway, I got out to his 'house' at the top of a good side hill - maybe 500-800 feet high.  His house was a boat, sitting there.  Pretty big one, like a shrimp trawler or something.  No idea how he got it this far inland.  Well, you could go ahead and put your boat 800 km inland.  You'd be ready......

Oh, and he wanted too much for the old phone.

If I was one of the lucky early investors with tons of BTC, i would absolutely live on a boat, install some solar panels there and live off the sun. It would be great. Too bad I cant afford it

I thought about it before and started again recently after reading all these news about possible NATO - Russia conflict. I have a house on the edge of a forest and always thought of it as a last resort bug out place, but it lacks some critical stuff like a generator. Also in case of a war I'd probably have to face bands of looters... A boat sounds much better, the only problem is I live 800km from the sea