A quick checklist…
How to tell if a boat is a VolkCruiser… It’s affordable by someone on a blue-collar budget. It’s 40-feet or less. It has VERY simple systems. It has a minimal carbon footprint. It’s owner repairable. More on this tomorrow.
About the Adventure 40…
The whole VolksCruiser concept is, you might say, the polar opposite to what’s going on over at Attainable Adventure Cruising with their ongoing design riff of the Adventure 40… The Adventure 40 is an interesting concept but it is most certainly not the sort of thing we’re talking about with the VolkCruiser and, I expect, …
I Might be splitting hairs…
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 …
Just good but not great…
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 …
That sharpie look…
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… …
Some more sharpie stuff…
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 …
Then again there’s the sharpie…
“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 …
What I want for next Christmas…
Dudley Dix has some excellent thoughts regarding the whole why it’s smart to build your own boat… I’d call it a must read. That said, I still think the most logical choice for a VolkCruiser budget is to rehab something cheap/free in reasonable shape but I’d much prefer to build from the keel up if …
It’s the price dude…
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 …
and about those multihulls…
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 …