The other day, I was informed that the hip dinghy that will be the new standard is the OC 330. Of course, being enamored of cool dinghies, I searched out Offshore Cruising Tenders and found a sorta/kinda dinghy that really did not impress me. My first impression was that it’s a RIB meets plywood stitch …
I’m currently in the midst of getting the boat ready to get out of dodge for the “H” season. The biggest hassle being getting rid of all the stuff I no longer need (including a Cal 34) and getting the Islander in cruising trim. The current possible destinations are Grenada, Trinidad, Curacao, Columbia or Panama. …
So, it’s time to build a new dinghy for some serious cruising and, over the last few days, I’ve been looking for a design that makes sense. Lately, I’ve been using a six-foot dinghy but being over built is way too heavy to be used for serious cruising. Hence the need to build something new. …
Practical Boat Owner, otherwise known as PBO, has a small article talking about the Westerly Cirrus and Tiger that is well worth reading. That said, I have not a frelling clue as to what a decent sofa actually costs so, if anyone out there does maybe you could let the rest of us know in …
Just after I got up this morning and cleaned off the reindeer turds from the coach-roof, I saw that Voile & Moteur had a write up for a design that resonated with me big time. Since buying a fixer-upper Islander 36, I’ve had this somewhat hazy idea of how I wanted to adapt the design …
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 …
