Just out of curiosity I was looking at the list of this year’s ARC Rally boats and it makes some interesting reading… I’ll sum it up this way… Lots of big expensive boats. Now, I’m on record as being a non-fan of cruising rallies. Partly because I don’t feel a lot of folks sailing towards …
I’ve always considered one of the most important factors in being a happy camper on a boat is simply knowing where you are… Being lost on the other hand is seriously unhappy-making! So, having charts is a pretty needful thing on the list. As it happens, I need to get some charts and boy howdy …
Perfection is an interesting and somewhat elusive concept in general, especially when connected to things like boats. From my experience, I put perfection in things of a nautical or marine nature about as likely to exist as honest politicians or pink unicorns… Need I say more? Which is not to say there is not stuff …
Back when we were cruising the Med and West Africa in the early 90’s, you hardly ever came across anyone with dinghies bigger than eight feet. As far as outboards went, 5HP or smaller was the fashion unless you had a sailboat larger than 60 feet… At the time, we had a Bolger Tortoise which, …
Every once in awhile a reader drops me a line with a good deal he’s seen on a boat and yesterday it was an Irwin up in New Haven… … that was going for less than $3000 and, from the looks of the picture, a pretty good deal. Of course, there’s a catch. Every boat …
The current issue of WoodenBoat has a really good article about using galvanized wire for rigging… I mention this because I just spent a kiss over $50 each for four new 1/2″ stainless turnbuckles which, while cheap for stainless, it did not escape my notice that galvanized turnbuckles were a whole lot cheaper. Which underlines …
What a lot of folks forget when discussing cruising budgets is that the more self-sufficient you are the lower the cruising budget is going to be. As much as I try to keep our food budget frugal and while saving ten cents a pound on carrots or eating cheaper cuts of meat does add up …
The carnage of the current Salty Dawg rally has given me a lot to think about the last couple of days… For instance, the various boating media coverage seems to think it is sorta/kinda normal for masts to fall down, rudders to fall off or break, and the fact that there are heroic Coast Guard …
Can you do simple math? This mornings post by Attainable Adventure Cruising is a good example of why anyone interested in cruising on a budget should be reading it on a regular basis and it includes a bit about growth that everyone should read and I do mean EVERYONE. More about that later…
So… I expect, since you’re reading this, that you’re not someone who is going to be cruising on a $60,269.80 a year budget. So, we’ll just assume you’re a $6000, $9000, or $12000 a year type of person. Then again, maybe you just want to try and get a handle on the whole sustainable-less-is-more-cruising-on-a-budget thought …
