I recently had a conversation with someone wanting to get into cruising and it seemed that his main goal had a lot to do with achieving a certain level of independence. Sound familiar? For me, the best way to achieve a reasonable amount of independence is to simplify and live within one’s means. Which, I’ll …
Every morning at just about 9:00 a.m., a daysail trimaran slips past our stern taking tourists off to Buck Island. I mention this because most of the days I really envy their quiet outboard as they whisper past. Yeah, I suffer from outboard envy. Outboards make all kinds of sense for sailboats and I often …
Every once in a while I find myself somewhat dumbfounded on just how bad some of the Islander 36 build and design happen to be. Far too often I find myself doing the “What the hell were they thinking of?” two-step mantra and it’s just sorta/kinda crazy making. Of course, the truth is that the …
One of the reasons we bought our Islander 36 was because it ticked the same needs as the Dufour 35. For comparison here’s the islander 36… As far as the numbers go they’re very similar and if you want to check them out you can find them here for the Dufour and Islander at Sailboat …
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 …
Our Cal 34 “So It Goes” was bought because, having lost our Loose Moose 2, we needed a boat in a hurry to use until we could build a Loose Moose 3. As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time to have a temporary boat. Being a temporary boat, it gave …
We live in a society where people put great store in the idea of perfection especially where sailboats are concerned. I mean, who would not like to have the perfect boat? So, what makes a boat perfect? Does anyone out there have a list of the required bits that makes a boat perfect? My problem …
