>I've heard both of those, but as allusions to marriage.
"If it flies, floats or fornicates, it's cheaper to rent than to buy."
Is the phrase I've heard most often.
Kind of a sad worldview, where in each of the three relationships described, the primary focus is to extract value in exchange for money, rather than obtaining value from the investment of personal effort.
I don't think it implies that worldview, but rather states a simple fact. Lots of people who say that phrase have still chosen to buy a boat/plane or get married, which would actually imply the opposite.
Airlines are the easiest way of turning a billionaire into a millionaire.
I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for a machine where anything going wrong will most likely result in fatalities, which is usually what happens in general aviation.
Having sold our Contessa 26 last year for cheap, I can say it has been the happiest day. I no longer worry about what is happening during a storm. We just got back from vacation aboard someone else's motor (sailing?) yacht where our bed, food, navigation, and boat maintenance was all done for us for less than it would cost just to haul out our old sailboat. I'd rather be sailing than doing any boat maintenance. As beautiful as that all that wood looks in the pictures, it is not fun to maintain unless that is what you like doing.
The closest I ever came to wanting a boat was something like one of those tiny one man sail boats.... for messing about on the weekend for a few hours.
For me it was reading the riddle of the sands and about 20 years ago I passed on the chance to do a leg of the round the world yacht race - I was worried about my existing medical condition meaning I would need a medicvac and spoil the race for the others.
Former boat owner as well. Now I look at charters as a bargain. Especially if you get an offbrand, ie not Moorings, charter company. I loved our boat, it was our home for 2 years. But the constant worry of it not being there or damaged while we were away was stressful.
Do you get a better utility / maintenance ratio if you buy a boat use it all weekend every weekend and then sell it, rather than than having it for a long time and using it sparingly?
Ted Heath -- former UK Prime Minister, who won the Admiral's Cup in his racing yacht whilst PM put it thus (back when £5 was probably worth about £30+):
Ocean racing is like standing under a cold shower tearing up £5 notes.
A number of years ago we decided to get a boat. I've been sailing my entire adult life (through clubs) and love it. And yet, I am also good at math and have seen friends and acquaintances go through the realities of boat ownership. I had exactly zero interest in that.
We bought a boat. It was in good condition. The plan was to enjoy it that summer and sell it a the end of the season. In other words, I bought a boat with the stipulation that we would not keep it after three months. That was not negotiable. We would potentially lose a little money in the transaction. I thought of this as a rental fee.
This worked out great. We had a good time boating that summer. I did not spend a dime doing anything to the boat (I made sure of this by being careful during the purchase selection phase). We sold the boat for $1,000 less than we paid for it. With slip fees that was about $800 per month "rental". Perfect.
I am of a similar mindset. My family has owned a small lake house in (very) rural Maine for close to thirty years. My parents have spent a small fortune to maintain and upgrade the property over the years.
While I am incredibly grateful for the summers spent there as a child, the burden of ownership from a financial and time point of view had major consequences over the years. Because this property put such a strain on finances, it put my father through incredible strain at work. His health paid the price. My mother also had to weather the strain of raising three boys and working full-time to help ends meet. And because of ownership and these hardships, going to the lake became a requirement for every vacation we took. Even when we moved twelve hours away.
I've carried this lesson with me for many years now. When the temptation has struck to make a big purchase like this, I remind myself that often our possessions end up owning us. You can rent practically anything you want nowadays, and in doing so do not need to face all of the hidden financial and personal costs associated with ownership.
I put RV ownership in that same category. A bunch of my neighbors own RV's. If I had to guess I would say they are parked about 350 days out of the year, in some cases 365. So, at the best utilization rate we are talking about being parked 96% of the time. In some cases they have to park them off-site and pay monthly storage fees. I now people who have had their RV's for over twenty years. I can't understand the math.
We've rented RV's three times in the last twenty years. The cost ranges from about $100 per day to a few hundred per day. That math I can understand. We even have a favorite RV camping spot we've been to where you can order an RV to be delivered and setup for you. You just show up and start your vacation, no need to drive an RV around at all!
For some reason, buying an RV feels different from renting one. Buying an RV feels like buying an asset; renting one feels like throwing money away. (Maybe this is because I've never bought one!)
I understand the numbers. I understand exactly your argument here. I would say that you are correct. But for me, personally, it doesn't feel like it. And so, from time to time, I still consider buying an RV. So far, I've always managed to talk myself out of it...
I do not disagree. But my less-analytical side sees that, after purchase, I've got something to touch, so it must be an asset, right? (As opposed to a rental, when after the rental is over, it's gone.)
RV’s tend to have enormous depreciation, or at best they may break even if you are lucky. Unless you are urban camping or squatting where you can, it can be very expensive to park them at a popular destination ($1k+/month).
Source: I’ve watched my parents also spend a small fortune on RV’s in their retirement. They’ve traded up twice and eaten 50%+ depreciation each time. YMMV.
What you say makes sense, but is also pretty clearly sub-optimal, economically, for most people. Which is also totally fine! A utilitarian would say you're just paying for that feeling of ownership and derive most of the value of owning from that.
Fully agree. My wife and I have an RV, or a trailer, rather. We bought it because we needed to have a place to stay while doing surprise renovations to make the house we bought a couple of years back liveable. It's served that purpose, and is now sitting in the yard.
We're currently in what I see as the process of working up the nerve to just sell the damn thing. The idea of traveling with it is attractive, our daughter likes it, and all things considered, we had good times in it. But... Having to haul the damn thing around, maintain it, pay for camping etc - it does not add up IMO compared to just staying at a motel or sleeping in a tent if we want to rough it.
The RV inhabits this weird niche where you want more comfort than a tent affords but more freedom than you get with having to choose from motels or hotels. To me, that seems like a limitation, not an opportunity.
That's why I draw the line at a conversion van with a seat that folds into a bed. Unlike an RV it's useful for hauling stuff. Can go more places. Cheaper per mile. Think mine costs me about $75/month to own.
As someone who knows nothing about boats, I don't understand understand why there hasn't been more breaking of tradition. Why we don't use modern materials and methods to create boats that are much more resilient to external conditions, solar power instead of sails, etc.?
We do. One of the main points in the article is that this particular yacht is old, was made using materials and techniques that aren’t in general use anymore, and thus the skills needed to maintain it are gradually dying out.
Fiberglass, carbon fiber, aluminum, and stainless steel are modern materials commonly used in building boats. They are resilient to external conditions as long as you don't drive the boat into a rock or something.
Boats don't have enough usable surface area for solar panels to propel them at a sustained useful speed (especially not at night or in a storm). Most sailboats do now have small solar panels to power lights and electronics. Hybrid propulsion systems are available, although expensive.
There's at least one fully-electric solar yacht on the market.
At $1.5 million and a 23 MPH cruising speed, there probably won't be a lot of these built. I'm definitely curious to see if more demand for these drives the price down.
modern materials: lots of fiber reinforced resin and lots of aluminum. Not a lot of hammering caulk into seams these days. That said, salt water is really corrosive and it gets aerosolized and all over everything. Fresh water boats are a lot less maintenance intensive.
solar power instead of sails: A sunny day is about ½ HP per square yard of deck for a few hours. A 37 foot sailboat might get you about 15 square yards of deck if you really covered it, so < 10HP. Said boat might have a 40HP diesel for getting about. I can't say how many horsepower the sails make, but the boat I'm thinking of definitely has more sail power than engine power. (Pacific Seacraft 37).
That said, if you aren't planning to survive an ocean, but rather plan to have a pleasant day on a canal or a pond, an electric boat would be an excellent choice (though I'd just use batteries instead of solar) and are available.
The short answer is that because different or new isn't always better.
Modern materials like composites have pluses and minuses compared to metal or wood. One of the huge minuses is repairability and structural strength for long spans.
Solar power for propulsion works for small vehicles, but not well for larger ones where energy density is important. Or on cloudy days and at night.
In the boating world weight is less of an issue, but in aviation composites often end up weighing more than aluminum, especially in the first batch. They also have temperature issues over about 300 mph, compared to Mach 2+ for aluminum.
It sounds like this boat restoration was ill-advised, but that really depends on their long-term goals.
The wind is generated by the sun. It's abundant and it is efficient. And you can sail at night since the ocean is one giant solar powered battery bank.
We lived aboard a catamaran with 600W of solar and it was enough to charge our banks and make water.
> more resilient to external conditions
The sea is really big and very powerful. If you are on it long enough you'll see some terrifying stuff. The boats being built today aren't really designed for those conditions. They were designed to be sailed smarter by using modern forecasting and satellite weather tracking. Going out blind and hoping you don't run into a tropical storm is rare these days.
For context, making water is another area where modern materials and methods are often used. The better-equipped yachts have reverse osmosis setups which create fresh water from seawater by forcing it through a membrane at around 800 psi. Needless to say, the materials science and technology involved in doing this efficiently isn't trivial.
Drag equations are "putting the cart before the horse". So many other issues with this scenario. Mainly the connection between vessels, but added cost, too. Could it be done? Of course. Would it be practical? Almost absolutely not.
Re solar power: the short answer is that wind carries far more energy than solar.
Tûranor PlanetSolar is a 31m catamaran with over 500 square metres of solar panels. I think I'm right in saying that its cruising speed is slower than any regular yacht. A big racing yacht is multiple times faster.
What I'd be interested in seeing is if a big wind turbine could be put on a yacht, rather than sails. One fun advantage is that it should be able to travel directly into the wind.
I’m quite excited about possibilities of 3D printing entire hull (especially Using SLA printer). You could make it entirely of different characteristic or particularly easy to maintain certain aspects...
It all depends on plastic. Most important if you can build safe enough boat for the masses for 10th of a cost - that would destroy rest of manufacturers wasting money on manual labour.
35 years of racing sailboats(mostly other people's) ranging from 14-80ft have taught me a lot. You can do more than you thought. You can get in deeper than you ever imagined and still get out. And this sounds deep. The coolest thing is mentioned in the article. Sailing on and participating in this adventure changes lives. And saves more than you might know. Over the years I've known many people young and old who have died, by natural causes, or their own hand, or at the hand of another. Of hundreds of sailors I've known personally, I recall only one who took his own life.
I have been racing and sailing other peoples yachts for a similar time frame. I grew up in the Southern suburbs of Sydney. It is a place surrounded by waterways -- Botany Bay, Port Hacking and the Tasman sea.
When I was young, during the 1980's it seemed like every young person spent their free time sailing and boating. Numerous sailing clubs had weekend fleets numbering in the hundreds of vessels over multiple classes.
This has all but vanished today -- The clubs have either disappeared or are struggling.
I'm not sure what children do today instead, but sailing isn't it anymore.
>Financially, it was a foolish decision, which cost us at least double the original estimates. But being in a syndicate has meant sharing the losses and the workload.
Two good lessons. (1) Restorations are almost always far more expensive than just buying a similar boat that has been well maintained. (2) Group boat ownership is often a good idea, you can share the finances and no one actually ends up using the boat as often as they think they will.
>Group boat ownership is often a good idea, you can share the finances and no one actually ends up using the boat as often as they think they will.
That works well if you're all the type to just putt in a circle outside the harbor. If some of the owners are the type to beat the vessel up doing what it was intended to do and more and some of them aren't you will wind up with hard feelings when things break.
Because often things don't break right away. They just wear out prematurely or repeated abuse eventually gets them. If you have multiple people with varying use cases odds are someone is abusing the boat because they are trying to shoehorn it into a use case it really isn't well suited for.
If you are trying to bounce off 6ft surf (emphasis on "off" rather than "through" in a tri-hull) that will eventually come back to bite you in the form of tearing the vessel apart at the seams. If you are constantly beaching something with a deep V you can only go so long between events where the prop/lower unit unexpectedly finds the ground (and eventually that will get expensive). So you either share the cost of these repairs with the understanding that that's just the cost of doing business (because simply based on your varying use somebody will have to be more abuse to the vessel) or you all get your own boats that fit your use cases.
not much changes in terms of money. Unlike land and houses on that land, ships (and trailers, vans, etc) typically don’t appreciate in value: upkeep costs are just costs, you’re not usually “paying into” something which you can “get your money back on” later. Arguably that’s true for property too but we like to believe it’s not.
there are many factors beyond monetary value that ought to influence decision-making.
Structure can and do go up in value if replacement cost increases from higher material costs, labor costs, building code and permitting costs (that just add cost, not directly to buyer utility), etc.
often the limiting factor is finding a marina or other moorage that accepts liveaboards. For example it's almost completely impossible anywhere within a 45 minute commuting distance of downtown Seattle. Any money that you might save by living on a boat and paying just under $1000 a month for moorage (vs $3000 apartment) will be gone to maintenance and other hassles.
There are plenty of marinas in and around Seattle that allow liveaboards. There are waiting lists, but I know people who have gotten spots within a year or two of signing up.
Any resources on that? I assume we're essentially talking rowboats here, given the price range. I was going to say I'm very skeptical it's as easy as you make it sound, but after a quick mental rundown of material cost, I'm suddenly curious and maybe would like to build a boat!
The cheapest is skin on frame style boats (like the original Inuit kayaks.) You build a frame with wood and then wrap it with canvas and paint it to keep the water out. People have even made small dinghies this way.
The easiest (maybe, SoF is pretty easy) are probably plywood boats. A lot of people like "stitch and glue" but the "glue" is usually epoxy resin which is a human carcinogen so I've never tried it.
Anyone who enjoyed this article will likely enjoy watching the rebuild of Tally Ho, a 110 year old wooden sailing yacht. He's replacing everything and his series is amazing to watch.
The lead keel, some of the decking and hardware, some of the side planking, etc. are all being kept. Certainly most of the ship is being replaced, but not all.
This is one of the best YT "series" I've encountered in, oh, maybe forever.
Relaxing, engaging, fascinating, full of subtle wit, hard-earned knowledge. My wife thinks it is utterly boring, I could watch it for hours at a time (and have).
We use the term differently in British English. It’s a yacht if it has a cabin, a dingy if it doesn’t. We really don’t use “sailboat” at all (it sounds like “wingplane” to our ears).
There are a lot of folks out on the water in "ugly" boats that are not costing the arm&leg but safe and a lot of fun. Get a 100 foot boat, that is a boat that looks great from 100 feet away. Sailing is totally possible for anyone, do all the maintenance yourself, also a really good idea to deeply know every line and turnbuckle when out in the ocean days from a mechanic.
OMG they bought a wood boat, the only way to keep a wood boat is to start a foundation or be a billionaire.
And what a boat it is. 18 meters, that's a monster. Once long ago I worked for a sail maker in Edam, we'd have had trouble parking that outside the wharf, the main mast would have towered over the building.
>OMG they bought a wood boat, the only way to keep a wood boat is to start a foundation or be a billionaire.
absolutely. On the other hand, buying an old, requiring a lot of restoration/etc, boat is practically the only way to get such a beautiful wooden boat as they don't build them anymore for a couple of reasons:
1. those beautiful graceful lines were designed to "hack" the mid-20th-century CCA racing rules - the short waterline of a free standing boat becomes longer when the boat is heeling during actual sailing. Half a century ago the IOR rules de-facto replaced CCA and thus all those fat boats of 197x-198x which in turn seem to be more and more replaced during the last couple decades by the boats designed more for the downwind planing.
2. the introduction of mass produced fiberglass resin boats in 196x completely killed the economics of wooden boats at both stages - building as well as maintenance.
A mildly related sidenote just for visual pleasure for anybody who loves the boats - i think it is just magnificient how smooth and fast this Draken is sailing https://youtu.be/XORSpUUy0lQ?t=168
That's an incredible boat, definitely not one for those who are easily seasick. Also a nice testimony to how good the shipwrights and carpenters of that age already were. It is almost skimming across the waves in some shots.
My Dad bought a wooden boat when I was 14. I was (happy to cooperate) slave labor maintaining that boat: it was kept in San Francisco Bay and I put on my SCUBA gear and cleaned the bottom every month, with my Dad I learned how to care for a wooden boat, etc. It was a 22 ton monster that we sailed often between SF Bay and Northern Mexico. I was fortunate that my Dad paid for all of my college expenses but I worked 20+ hours a week in summers maintaining that boat. When I graduated from college and got a job my Dad sold that boat within a month and replaced it with a Passport 40 which was made of fiberglass.
So, the secret to owning a wooden boat is having a son who loves sailing and boat maintenance.
Bought a $4000 NZD 24ft yacht in February. The first "maintenance" is going be early next year to reapply anti-fouling (approx $500 NZD). What used most of the money tho:
- Outboard $1200 NZD
- Insurance (for marina) $300
- $140 NZD VHF
- $240 NZD life jackets
- $1560 NZD marina
So the boat itself is only half the coast itself... I still think we've got off quite cheaply and provided us with tons of fun.
reminds me of the documentary that Moxie Marlinspike, of Signal fame among others, did a few years back about fixing up a boat in south Florida and sailing it in the Caribbean.
I've experienced this with cars, where I wanted to buy something cheap and fix it up, only to find the costs were way higher than I'd anticipated. I've since learned to look for better "deals" that require minimal work, but the lesson that trying to cheat reality doesn't work is still there.
I feel like a "life lessons Wiki" would be really useful. When the old salts said the buyers were crazy, they were right! But they probably couldn't articulate in great enough detail, so they weren't listened to.
Unless you have an edge over others, the car has already been priced to 'be fixed up.' Nevermind that at least a third of used cars are for sale because they are 'upside down' in repairs. I.e. they are worth less than a mechanic would charge to fix it. If you can outdiagnose, source cheaper parts, and not value your time, you can make a reliable profit.
Number one tip: know your niche and stick to it. Pick a single model/generation/platform and dive deep. Forums exist for every car, boat, tractor, and hot air baloon made. The common issues, fixes, and prices will already be in your mind when you evaluate one to buy. Money pits are always just things you don't know well enough to make sound financial decisions about.
It means you buy something unfinished with the plan to improve it after purchase.
A lot of people buy houses that way in the USA, but it is usually stressful on the marriage, and banks require the house to be habitable before a mortgage is issued.
Generally large boats are not in the same category, so it's a red flag here.
So true. My wife and I noticed that several of our friends who had renovated their house on the way to a big showcase (e.g., to become one of the homes on a home design tour) ended up getting divorced right after the big showcase. They lost their focus on what really mattered.
2. It allows to trade your time for a huge discount which may be advantageous if you have relatively low wage.
3. It creates healthier market making boats cheaper for everyone because now low end yacht makers compete with used boats and because as an owner you can sell used boat making it effectively cheaper to own.
Now... it is a folly if you have no idea what you are buying. Some kinds of damage is going to be too costly to repair properly. It is best if you have already spent some time sailing before you buy one.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] thread"The two happiest days in a boat owner's life: the day you buy the boat, and the day you sell the boat."
I imagine a yacht is just that .. but more.
"If it flies, floats or fornicates, it's cheaper to rent than to buy."
Is the phrase I've heard most often.
Kind of a sad worldview, where in each of the three relationships described, the primary focus is to extract value in exchange for money, rather than obtaining value from the investment of personal effort.
I certainly wouldn't want to be responsible for a machine where anything going wrong will most likely result in fatalities, which is usually what happens in general aviation.
But in the end, one realizes that there can be heavy losses, monetary or otherwise.
And yet when the boat is underway on a good day, their hands on the wheel... I have yet to catch a boat owner without a smile on their face.
The closest I ever came to wanting a boat was something like one of those tiny one man sail boats.... for messing about on the weekend for a few hours.
Ocean racing is like standing under a cold shower tearing up £5 notes.
There's a related proverb about marriage and airplanes.
We bought a boat. It was in good condition. The plan was to enjoy it that summer and sell it a the end of the season. In other words, I bought a boat with the stipulation that we would not keep it after three months. That was not negotiable. We would potentially lose a little money in the transaction. I thought of this as a rental fee.
This worked out great. We had a good time boating that summer. I did not spend a dime doing anything to the boat (I made sure of this by being careful during the purchase selection phase). We sold the boat for $1,000 less than we paid for it. With slip fees that was about $800 per month "rental". Perfect.
While I am incredibly grateful for the summers spent there as a child, the burden of ownership from a financial and time point of view had major consequences over the years. Because this property put such a strain on finances, it put my father through incredible strain at work. His health paid the price. My mother also had to weather the strain of raising three boys and working full-time to help ends meet. And because of ownership and these hardships, going to the lake became a requirement for every vacation we took. Even when we moved twelve hours away.
I've carried this lesson with me for many years now. When the temptation has struck to make a big purchase like this, I remind myself that often our possessions end up owning us. You can rent practically anything you want nowadays, and in doing so do not need to face all of the hidden financial and personal costs associated with ownership.
We've rented RV's three times in the last twenty years. The cost ranges from about $100 per day to a few hundred per day. That math I can understand. We even have a favorite RV camping spot we've been to where you can order an RV to be delivered and setup for you. You just show up and start your vacation, no need to drive an RV around at all!
I understand the numbers. I understand exactly your argument here. I would say that you are correct. But for me, personally, it doesn't feel like it. And so, from time to time, I still consider buying an RV. So far, I've always managed to talk myself out of it...
To me, assets are things that make me money. Things that continually require me to pay money are liabilities.
Source: I’ve watched my parents also spend a small fortune on RV’s in their retirement. They’ve traded up twice and eaten 50%+ depreciation each time. YMMV.
Another interesting statistic is that people who retire and don't remain active have greatly increased mortality.
Everyone feels that way about something.
We're currently in what I see as the process of working up the nerve to just sell the damn thing. The idea of traveling with it is attractive, our daughter likes it, and all things considered, we had good times in it. But... Having to haul the damn thing around, maintain it, pay for camping etc - it does not add up IMO compared to just staying at a motel or sleeping in a tent if we want to rough it.
The RV inhabits this weird niche where you want more comfort than a tent affords but more freedom than you get with having to choose from motels or hotels. To me, that seems like a limitation, not an opportunity.
Weekend getaways are harder to make pay off.
I know one couple who took their RV around the United States. "we took two laps". I think they made some memories to last their whole life.
Folks who live in their RV just have to come close to a mortgage/rent to have it pay off.
Edit: Thank you so much, everyone, for answering!
We do. One of the main points in the article is that this particular yacht is old, was made using materials and techniques that aren’t in general use anymore, and thus the skills needed to maintain it are gradually dying out.
Boats don't have enough usable surface area for solar panels to propel them at a sustained useful speed (especially not at night or in a storm). Most sailboats do now have small solar panels to power lights and electronics. Hybrid propulsion systems are available, although expensive.
At $1.5 million and a 23 MPH cruising speed, there probably won't be a lot of these built. I'm definitely curious to see if more demand for these drives the price down.
[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a28834625/so...
Rain, wind and thunderstorms also damage the boat.
solar power instead of sails: A sunny day is about ½ HP per square yard of deck for a few hours. A 37 foot sailboat might get you about 15 square yards of deck if you really covered it, so < 10HP. Said boat might have a 40HP diesel for getting about. I can't say how many horsepower the sails make, but the boat I'm thinking of definitely has more sail power than engine power. (Pacific Seacraft 37).
That said, if you aren't planning to survive an ocean, but rather plan to have a pleasant day on a canal or a pond, an electric boat would be an excellent choice (though I'd just use batteries instead of solar) and are available.
Modern materials like composites have pluses and minuses compared to metal or wood. One of the huge minuses is repairability and structural strength for long spans.
Solar power for propulsion works for small vehicles, but not well for larger ones where energy density is important. Or on cloudy days and at night.
In the boating world weight is less of an issue, but in aviation composites often end up weighing more than aluminum, especially in the first batch. They also have temperature issues over about 300 mph, compared to Mach 2+ for aluminum.
It sounds like this boat restoration was ill-advised, but that really depends on their long-term goals.
We lived aboard a catamaran with 600W of solar and it was enough to charge our banks and make water.
> more resilient to external conditions
The sea is really big and very powerful. If you are on it long enough you'll see some terrifying stuff. The boats being built today aren't really designed for those conditions. They were designed to be sailed smarter by using modern forecasting and satellite weather tracking. Going out blind and hoping you don't run into a tropical storm is rare these days.
Tûranor PlanetSolar is a 31m catamaran with over 500 square metres of solar panels. I think I'm right in saying that its cruising speed is slower than any regular yacht. A big racing yacht is multiple times faster.
What I'd be interested in seeing is if a big wind turbine could be put on a yacht, rather than sails. One fun advantage is that it should be able to travel directly into the wind.
Racers will keep using carbon fibre.
I love that fiberglass has made sailing more accessible, but those timber hulls really have something to them.
When I was young, during the 1980's it seemed like every young person spent their free time sailing and boating. Numerous sailing clubs had weekend fleets numbering in the hundreds of vessels over multiple classes.
This has all but vanished today -- The clubs have either disappeared or are struggling.
I'm not sure what children do today instead, but sailing isn't it anymore.
We solved distraction as if it were a game of perfect information then we put it in everyone's pocket.
Two good lessons. (1) Restorations are almost always far more expensive than just buying a similar boat that has been well maintained. (2) Group boat ownership is often a good idea, you can share the finances and no one actually ends up using the boat as often as they think they will.
That works well if you're all the type to just putt in a circle outside the harbor. If some of the owners are the type to beat the vessel up doing what it was intended to do and more and some of them aren't you will wind up with hard feelings when things break.
If you are trying to bounce off 6ft surf (emphasis on "off" rather than "through" in a tri-hull) that will eventually come back to bite you in the form of tearing the vessel apart at the seams. If you are constantly beaching something with a deep V you can only go so long between events where the prop/lower unit unexpectedly finds the ground (and eventually that will get expensive). So you either share the cost of these repairs with the understanding that that's just the cost of doing business (because simply based on your varying use somebody will have to be more abuse to the vessel) or you all get your own boats that fit your use cases.
(this shouldn't necessarily deter you from owning one: just, go in with open eyes)
there are many factors beyond monetary value that ought to influence decision-making.
On the upside, you have no neighbors.
over
another
thousand
Easy enough in fact that I wouldn't bother buying one until you at least get into the $1k+ range.
The easiest (maybe, SoF is pretty easy) are probably plywood boats. A lot of people like "stitch and glue" but the "glue" is usually epoxy resin which is a human carcinogen so I've never tried it.
http://sampsonboat.co.uk/
The lead keel, some of the decking and hardware, some of the side planking, etc. are all being kept. Certainly most of the ship is being replaced, but not all.
Relaxing, engaging, fascinating, full of subtle wit, hard-earned knowledge. My wife thinks it is utterly boring, I could watch it for hours at a time (and have).
Source: former owner of Hunter, Hylas & others.
OMG they bought a wood boat, the only way to keep a wood boat is to start a foundation or be a billionaire.
absolutely. On the other hand, buying an old, requiring a lot of restoration/etc, boat is practically the only way to get such a beautiful wooden boat as they don't build them anymore for a couple of reasons:
1. those beautiful graceful lines were designed to "hack" the mid-20th-century CCA racing rules - the short waterline of a free standing boat becomes longer when the boat is heeling during actual sailing. Half a century ago the IOR rules de-facto replaced CCA and thus all those fat boats of 197x-198x which in turn seem to be more and more replaced during the last couple decades by the boats designed more for the downwind planing.
2. the introduction of mass produced fiberglass resin boats in 196x completely killed the economics of wooden boats at both stages - building as well as maintenance.
A mildly related sidenote just for visual pleasure for anybody who loves the boats - i think it is just magnificient how smooth and fast this Draken is sailing https://youtu.be/XORSpUUy0lQ?t=168
Thank you for posting this.
So, the secret to owning a wooden boat is having a son who loves sailing and boat maintenance.
- Outboard $1200 NZD
- Insurance (for marina) $300
- $140 NZD VHF
- $240 NZD life jackets
- $1560 NZD marina
So the boat itself is only half the coast itself... I still think we've got off quite cheaply and provided us with tons of fun.
https://vimeo.com/15351476
Glad I got mine sold off a while back. Maintenance is costly.
I feel like a "life lessons Wiki" would be really useful. When the old salts said the buyers were crazy, they were right! But they probably couldn't articulate in great enough detail, so they weren't listened to.
Number one tip: know your niche and stick to it. Pick a single model/generation/platform and dive deep. Forums exist for every car, boat, tractor, and hot air baloon made. The common issues, fixes, and prices will already be in your mind when you evaluate one to buy. Money pits are always just things you don't know well enough to make sound financial decisions about.
"An account of an around-the-world solo sail in a 31-foot boat, 1988-1991"
https://arachnoid.com/sailbook/index.html
Took $30m and 40 years!
https://www.shf.org.au/explore-the-fleet/our-operational-ves...
A lot of people buy houses that way in the USA, but it is usually stressful on the marriage, and banks require the house to be habitable before a mortgage is issued.
Generally large boats are not in the same category, so it's a red flag here.
So true. My wife and I noticed that several of our friends who had renovated their house on the way to a big showcase (e.g., to become one of the homes on a home design tour) ended up getting divorced right after the big showcase. They lost their focus on what really mattered.
Also, he made it fully autonomous.
https://towndock.net/shippingnews/sean-d-epagnier-and-alexan...
1. It is the only way for many people
2. It allows to trade your time for a huge discount which may be advantageous if you have relatively low wage.
3. It creates healthier market making boats cheaper for everyone because now low end yacht makers compete with used boats and because as an owner you can sell used boat making it effectively cheaper to own.
Now... it is a folly if you have no idea what you are buying. Some kinds of damage is going to be too costly to repair properly. It is best if you have already spent some time sailing before you buy one.