SCOW just may be the new black…
Speaking of scows… Dave Z has some thoughts on the subject and a friend in France seems to have a cunning plan!
Two scows to keep an eye on…
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 …
A quick need/want refresher…
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 …
Solving the cost per pound equation one step at a time…
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 »
but, then again, with a cunning plan and a thick skin…
OK, I think I’ve made my point that you cannot build a boat with a VolksCruiser budget if you play the game the way everybody tells you it has to be played. So, you have a choice, you can either play by the rules or go rogue, step outside the accepted norms of sailboat fashion, …
but, then again, with a cunning plan and a thick skin… Read More »
More than likely some facts you don’t want to hear…
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 »
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 …