I’ve taken a break from monitoring potential VolksCruisers for sale but from today’s cursory glance there is no shortage of boats for reasonable money available. As to the Islander: work continues but most of the tasks are fairly easy and the difficult parts is in resisting the urge to throw money at needless things. The …
So, I just spent a couple of days surveying a boat I was sorta/kinda interested in buying and it’s just not going to happen. That said it did make me rethink a lot about the whole buying and selling of sailboats within the VolksCruiser realm. The boat in question was an Irwin Citation 38. This …
So, since I’ve pointed out that the Newport 28 s a pretty good potential VolksCruiser, I’ve had no shortage of emails asking me why they should consider one vs some more expensive reasonable facsimile. Over in Washington state there’s a Newport 28 for $3.5K with an engine (though whether it works or not is not …
While I know that the overall consensus is that the best cruising dinghy is an eight or ten-foot RIB with a 9.9/15 HP engine but I’ll just have to disagree. For a long time I’ll admit that I thought the best cruising dinghy was Phil Bolger’s Tortoise as it did everything we needed it to …
I’ve long wanted to build a small canal cruiser for the time that I’m past my sailing days. Philip Thiel’s Joli Boat has always been at the top pf my list and a great example of getting the most livability into a 22’9″ X 8′ envelope. As it happens “Small Boats Magazine” has an excellent …
I know everyone says that when using plywood aboard a boat that one should always use the best marine plywood you can get. So here’s where that advice does not quite add up. Some time back I built a hard dodger with marine ply, saturated it with epoxy and glassed then painted it. I was …
I read recently how Keith Leitzke has returned from another cruise to nowhere in particular and it got me thinking about a few things… The first being how that Bill Lapworth’s CAL 20 is still a great minimal cruising design in spite of the fact that it was never really designed to be one. While …
regarding a very long voyage in a pretty small boat… Read More »
Over a long period of time I’ve been troubled about some “truths” a lot of folks take as gospel… Like this one. “Boats break. A lot.” A phrase found a few times over at The Retirement Project (a blog you might want to check out from time to time) which I find somewhat problematic. …
