Talk about stuff that gets up my nose… Boat bucks! Not so much the fact that we, from time to time, have to spend money on our boats but the fact that we have been trained to think it is natural and proper to pay excessive money for goods and services and be proud of …
I keep reading about folks who buy boats in pretty good condition and then spend thousands and thousands of dollars fixing and “improving” them. Which brings me to an important rule for folks of the VolksCruiser persuasion… If it ain’t broke don’t fix it! The thing is, any given boat has a market value and …
The other day I was looking at a very nice CAL 28 for sale… Sure, it needed a bit of work but nothing $1000 and a few weeks of part-time work wouldn’t take care of. For the record, it was selling for $1500. I mention this because there are lots of similar boats just waiting …
Having a couple of boat related blogs that tend to fixate on the less expensive side of things, I get quite a lot of mail of the “how-can-I-have-the-stuff-I-want-for-not-a-lot-of-money” sort. I’m pretty sure my answers to those folks are almost always disappointing because the words ‘want’ and the phrase ‘not a lot of money’ seldom, if …
Most people don’t realize it but it is really rather easy to make building or rehabbing a sailboat a whole lot more affordable… For example, let’s look at hatches since I recently replaced a few on “So It Goes”. My options were to buy new hatches, try and find used hatches, or build new hatches. …
Solving the cost per pound equation one step at a time… Read More »
It seems obvious to me how costs get out of control when you start thinking bigger boat but, from reading many emails from readers of Boat Bits, a lot of folks think there is some sort of magic workaround that allows them to get around it. I think it has something to do with magic …
More than likely some facts you don’t want to hear… Read More »
Speaking of VolksCruisers in general, a reader recently pointed out a book and asked me for my opinion and it raised a bit of a question… What the hell exactly does affordable actually mean? “Twenty Affordable Sailboats to Take You Anywhere” by Gregg Nestor is not a bad book… Fact is, we seem to like …
Yesterday’s mailbag was sorta interesting so maybe a good time to set the record straight. First of all, I like multihulls. Sure, I’m somewhat critical of a lot of modern low bridgedeck multihulls fobbed off on an unsuspecting public but, on the whole, I think multihulls make all kinds of sense when they are designed …
Yeah, what about multihulls in the whole VolksCruiser universe? Problematic at best as multihulls are just silly expensive. I see old Piver and Jim Brown trimarans at reasonable prices that make sense from time to time, the odd Wharram or other cat home-built with issues, but, to be truthful, on a VolksCruiser budget, multihulls are …
So, what about building your own VolksCruiser? The thing is, I really like building boats but I have to hesitate when it comes to recommending that someone build a boat these days on a VolksCruiser budget. The truth of the matter is, I’m not sure it can actually be done in the current economic climate. …
