For people looking to buy their first boat, I try to steer them towards an older o'day mariner or day sailor. These boats are plentiful, well built, forgiving, cheap to buy, and yet have a pedigree. It helps that anything larger than a Honda Civic can tow one with ease.
The biggest issue with getting people into sailing, at least here at the Jersey Shore, is the lack of places to keep them. Most of our marinas were long ago replaced by condominiums. Some towns do not allow boats to be stored where they can be seen, so no on street storage, no driveway storage, and if your house is on the corner, no backyard storage (looking at you, Ocean City, NJ). Even if you can store your boat on it's trailer, many of the shore towns lack even the space to leave one, the houses are so tightly packed together, only one car or maybe two can park in front.
Sailing also has an elitist problem. Unlike a powerboat, that most anybody who can drive a car and get the feel for, sailing seems powered by pixie dust and black magic. It has arcane terms spoken in a foreign language, and none of it is intuitive.
so true. We value and tout the simplicity of small boats, but there's no such things as a quick sail if your boat is in a storage yard 25 minutes away.
I have too many boats, if you can believe that. While not as many as some have, I happen to have two Kayaks, a rowing wherry, and four sailboats with another about to be built. Thankfully all but two can be stored beneath my back deck.
8 months out of the year, my Montgomery 17 is in the water in a rented slip behind somebody's house. The four months out of the year she is on her trailer, she sits next to my house. The other, a 60 year old wooden GP14, I actually rent a storage place for. While I keep her out front during warm weather with a fitted cover, 6 to 8 months out of the year she is in locked storage out of the elements. Plywood that old does not need any help in delaminating.
Like you said though, a boat that is 25 minutes away limits how much of a quick sail one can have. My GP is that boat. When in storage it is a complete pain to get over there to do anything. That might actually be for the best though, I do enjoy tinkering.
Great! I offer a half day Small Craft Cruising class at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. We address the low cost of camp cruisers in many ways, but sharing cost data from today’s active vessel users will be invaluable in helping to make the case. Good on ya!
I love this idea! I've been talking with a couple who wants to buy their first small sailboat and the results of this survey will be super useful to them.
Some clarification for my submission might be in order. For the first seven years of ownership of my boat, it was stored in a mast up yard in Oxnard CA. I lived too far from the sailing area and too much time would have been wasted setting and unshipping the rig each time. If memory serves, at the time I was paying around $135 to the yard and had a man helping with maintenance tasks for about another $100 per month. I continuously added gear, much f which I built myself but had pros do some such as the canvas work for my dodger and cockpit cover. For a small boat there is little doubt in my mind this was not the cheapest way to go but has much to recommend it. I now live on a small private harbor with my own boat dock in the back yard.
The survey talks about majority of storage but in a lot of the country there is 4-5 months a year where some of us are paying mooring fees etc where as the majority of the time it's in a backyard for free. So not sure that's an accurate way to capture costs.
Colin, I certainly agree. Unfortunately deeper questions on the topics of storage and restoration had to be left on the cutting room floor in the name of keeping the survey short and simple.
If you have trouble with first survey link, please use second one at end of article or this one: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdDdTzJnsRQgZGsXWsa1skHATY8lF-3WpfGWzGq2PAUYA0djw/viewform
For people looking to buy their first boat, I try to steer them towards an older o'day mariner or day sailor. These boats are plentiful, well built, forgiving, cheap to buy, and yet have a pedigree. It helps that anything larger than a Honda Civic can tow one with ease.
The biggest issue with getting people into sailing, at least here at the Jersey Shore, is the lack of places to keep them. Most of our marinas were long ago replaced by condominiums. Some towns do not allow boats to be stored where they can be seen, so no on street storage, no driveway storage, and if your house is on the corner, no backyard storage (looking at you, Ocean City, NJ). Even if you can store your boat on it's trailer, many of the shore towns lack even the space to leave one, the houses are so tightly packed together, only one car or maybe two can park in front.
Sailing also has an elitist problem. Unlike a powerboat, that most anybody who can drive a car and get the feel for, sailing seems powered by pixie dust and black magic. It has arcane terms spoken in a foreign language, and none of it is intuitive.
so true. We value and tout the simplicity of small boats, but there's no such things as a quick sail if your boat is in a storage yard 25 minutes away.
I have too many boats, if you can believe that. While not as many as some have, I happen to have two Kayaks, a rowing wherry, and four sailboats with another about to be built. Thankfully all but two can be stored beneath my back deck.
8 months out of the year, my Montgomery 17 is in the water in a rented slip behind somebody's house. The four months out of the year she is on her trailer, she sits next to my house. The other, a 60 year old wooden GP14, I actually rent a storage place for. While I keep her out front during warm weather with a fitted cover, 6 to 8 months out of the year she is in locked storage out of the elements. Plywood that old does not need any help in delaminating.
Like you said though, a boat that is 25 minutes away limits how much of a quick sail one can have. My GP is that boat. When in storage it is a complete pain to get over there to do anything. That might actually be for the best though, I do enjoy tinkering.
…and then there’s the $34,000 SCAMP package now being offered at the Annapolis Boat Show.🥴
Great! I offer a half day Small Craft Cruising class at the Center for Wooden Boats in Seattle. We address the low cost of camp cruisers in many ways, but sharing cost data from today’s active vessel users will be invaluable in helping to make the case. Good on ya!
I love this idea! I've been talking with a couple who wants to buy their first small sailboat and the results of this survey will be super useful to them.
Some clarification for my submission might be in order. For the first seven years of ownership of my boat, it was stored in a mast up yard in Oxnard CA. I lived too far from the sailing area and too much time would have been wasted setting and unshipping the rig each time. If memory serves, at the time I was paying around $135 to the yard and had a man helping with maintenance tasks for about another $100 per month. I continuously added gear, much f which I built myself but had pros do some such as the canvas work for my dodger and cockpit cover. For a small boat there is little doubt in my mind this was not the cheapest way to go but has much to recommend it. I now live on a small private harbor with my own boat dock in the back yard.
Many of the expenses for gear, including sails, on the Whitehall are nonexistent due to barter.
The survey talks about majority of storage but in a lot of the country there is 4-5 months a year where some of us are paying mooring fees etc where as the majority of the time it's in a backyard for free. So not sure that's an accurate way to capture costs.
Colin, I certainly agree. Unfortunately deeper questions on the topics of storage and restoration had to be left on the cutting room floor in the name of keeping the survey short and simple.