Way back when I first started talking to Phil Bolger about possibly building a Loose Moose 2 he sent me a couple of cartoons (his description of a quick sketch to illustrate a point)… One was his breakdown schooner… The other was a design he was playing with for the guy who’d built the first …
I may have mentioned before how much I like Phil Bolger’s Jessie Cooper design. If you are looking for a VolksCruising design that gives you maximum bang for minimum bucks that is buildable in a short time frame, you’d have a difficult time finding better… That said, it’s not exactly an easy boat for most …
Kurt Hughes, a multihull designer I admire, had an interesting post on his blog about a couple building one of his 30-foot cruising cats… It’s a pretty cool cat in the minimalist vein and I like it. Fact is, I can’t imagine a better 30-foot cat for cruising in. That said, sadly, it’s not really …
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 …
Since we’re speaking of sharpies I really have to mention Phil Bolgers Breakdown Schooner… It’s always been one of my favorite love/hate designs and, as such, deserves a bit of discussion. Of course, it has a lot working for it… Shoal draft, reasonable accommodation, a low sorta/kinda tabernacled rig that stows within the length of …
When most people think of sharpies they think of something like this… Ted Brewer’s Mystic Sharpie Kind of neat, is it not? At 32′ it’s about what most people think a sharpie should be. Salty as all get out and for me the little Pinkyish detail from at the stern just kicks some serious butt… …
All boats have limitations and are going to be a compromise to some extent, it’s just part of the gig… Why should sharpies be an exception? Sharpies have two big advantages: they’re inexpensive/fast to build and they are very shoal draft. I’m not sure about you but I find those pretty frelling big advantages. In …
“Once the departure is made from the true sharpie hull configuration and concept, one is beginning to gild the lily. Costs soar and the result is seldom an improvement.” – Tom Colvin In my mind, the only possible exception for a boat that just might pull off the VolkCruiser concept/budget that you can build yourself …
