Back when I was living on a non-mobile peniche on the outskirts of Paris (1985) I really wanted to build a small cruising sailboat just about the same time that Tad Roberts got a mention in Cruising World for his Harry design. It was love at first sight. A scow with an LOA of 26′, …
One problem with sailboats used for cruising is they’re all pretty much designed for weekend and vacation use rather than serious cruising. Which, when you think of it, makes all kinds of sense because that’s how 95% of people who buy boats will use them. Of course, for the 5% that are going to use …
Tad Roberts has a new design in the works which, I expect, I’ll be telling you a lot more about in the next week or so, but for the moment, I’d just like to point out something important about it and boats in general… Speed: 6.5 knots with 15HP outboard, 9 knots with 40HP A …
Over at TriloBoat Talk, Dave Z has a must read post that anyone contemplating building or rehabbing a cruising boat should read… I’ll wait. I’ll go against the prevailing wisdom and point out that it’s really pretty easy to build or rehab a boat and well within the abilities of anyone who can chew gum …
The fact of the matter is not everyone needs to cross oceans in which case this sort of VolksCruiserish design makes all kinds of sense… Seriously, a boat like this could take you from Nova Scotia all the way down to the Caribbean (or if you’re of the West coast tribe, Alaska to Central America)… …
a great VolksCruiserish design of the coastal variety… Read More »
Here’s a glimpse of the interior accommodation… What Tad has to say about it… From the transom, four feet of cockpit with outboard well in the sole. Storage lockers port and starboard under the seats, each one is 24 cubic feet. A large locker under the forward cockpit sole, for gas cans, spare outboard, crab …
So, what about that Tad Robert’s scow cat schooner? Read More »
Now that you’ve had some time to think about the lug schooner rig (though we’ll be coming back to it in a post or two) let’s look at the other big chunk of a budget for a cruising boat… The engine. Of course, it’s been proven that a couple can cruise pretty well on a …
some more quick thoughts on designing a VolksCruiser that makes sense… Read More »
I was recently involved in a discussion about what features a boat should have to be a successful VolksCruiser… It was a problematic enterprise. The hard part in discussing an enterprise of frugality in a consumerist world is that there is almost always a certain disconnect of logic. Face it, anyone with a consumerist mindset …
Some quick thoughts on designing a VolkCruiser that makes sense… Read More »
Yesterday, over at Boat Bits, I mentioned a French boat I like that I thought was overpriced… Then again, some astute observers might point out that I think almost all boats are seriously overpriced. I’m just that kind of guy… As it happens, the Mojito 888 is a great boat for folks of the VolksCruiserish …
For those who don’t think a boat can be built quickly, you might want to check out the small cruising scow currently being built by Yann Quenet and his ongoing photo coverage of the process… Of course, for our purposes Yann’s SKROWL is too small for our VolksCruiser purpose but it would certainly scale up …
