The Case for a Bigger Boat

You can probably handle it, and frankly you deserve it....

Story by Josh Colvin

In the Victorian era they said the length of a man's boat, in feet, should match his age, in years. It’s no wonder then that my boat looks a bit childish, or if I seem a little immature for that matter—I’m falling some 40-feet short of my birthright vessel. Besides my 12-foot SCAMP I have a 7-foot pram, a 16-foot canoe, and a 23-foot Com-Pac sloop—for an impressive combined length of 58 feet.

Truth is I’m not sure I’d be able to handle a 53-footer. I had a neighbor who regularly captained a 90-foot sailboat. I asked him if docking and negotiating tight spaces in a boat that size was as terrifying as it looked. He shrugged his shoulders and said it was pretty much the same as docking a small sailboat. I guess driving an 18-wheeler is pretty much like driving a Toyota. For the record, my neighbor drove an old Chevy Suburban with conspicuously dented fenders, but as far as I knew he was a master seaman.

I’ve been dreaming about a cruise aboard my Com-Pac 23, but however compact it might be, considerations related to rigging, towing, mooring, and time, have so far kept me from my first proper cruise aboard her—I really don’t know how the Victorians managed.

Modern conventional wisdom says any sailboat you’d willingly sleep aboard should be at least 20-feet long, and that for sailing out of sight of land you’ll need something 30-feet or longer. Hopefully after hearing this, many of you are waking up to just how reckless you’ve been.

I was trying to remember the biggest boat I’ve ever captained. One time I ended up at the helm of a 50-foot powerboat for a few minutes. The owner was a friend of a friend. He was new to boating and had heard I published a nautical magazine, so asked for a hand. Never mind that my area of expertise was tiny sailboats—before I could argue my way out of it I was perched at the flybridge powering the lumbering yacht around the marina to the owner’s hand signals—sweating profusely despite the cool fall temperatures.

I’ve read that any cruising couple in their 60s should be able to handle a sailboat to about 50 feet. The Victorians would’ve scoffed at being seen on something so modest, but then they were also super into taxidermy and known to consume three gallons of gin per person per year. In fairness you’d need a certain size vessel just to accommodate the booze and the stuffed foxes.

There’s an older maxim that says a cruising boat should have a displacement of “2 1/2 to 5 long tons (5600 to 11,000 pounds) per person.” Based on this one I’m falling short by 10,555 pounds when I sail alone, and more than 20,000 pounds when I take a kid along. And this axiom comes before the advent of multi-speed winches, low-friction blocks and electric roller-furlers—or TowBoatUS. Imagine how comfortable I could be on a sailboat if I had another 20,000 pounds to work with. Best of all, the formula only gets better as I get older. •SCA•