Online Book: How To Buy a Cruising Boat

Buying a boat is really difficult: What features are vital? Which features are dispensable? In this chapter, John comes up with a way for you to figure out what you need in a boat…and what you don’t.

A fundamental fact is that, even if you are rich, you can’t have it all in an offshore voyaging boat and that goes double for the rest of us with more modest means. So the most important step in selecting a boat that will be successful for you is to identify the things that you really need. In this chapter I give you an easy to use and apply test to do just that.

Phyllis and I have been thinking and talking a lot about which boat we will buy after Morgan’s Cloud sells. And a big part of that has been setting a specification and budget, but in a different way.

When researching buying a cruising boat, we are deluged with information on all the gear she must have and how perfect she must be before we can go cruising. But is that really true? How about buying an old and tired boat and just getting out there? John tells his story of going cruising in a half-assed boat…and having one of the best times in his life. Will this work for you? He shares tips on how to decide.

Hang around with cruisers, and sooner or later someone will say, “Never buy a boat with…” Should we listen? John shares how to decide, and examines the choice between encapsulated and bolt on keels.

The most important decision when buying a boat is choosing the right hull. Get that wrong and all else is wasted. Matt shines a light on how to recognize good cruising hull designs and then relates that to real boats.

Buying a poorly designed boat is one of the most costly and heart breaking mistakes anyone can make. But maybe if we understand how bad designs come to be, we can avoid that.

It’s tempting to think that the more cool stuff a boat has, the better she is for cruising, but that approach can make the boat slow and uncomfortable. Eric explains how to tell when adding gear has gone too far.

John explains one of the most important criteria for selecting an offshore voyaging boat, and one of the most ignored.

One of the saddest things that can happen to a cruiser is buying a fundamentally bad boat, and there are plenty of those out there to tempt the uninformed. Here’s how to make sure that the boat you buy is well designed.

So what boat size is optimal for offshore voyaging? There is no one number. Rather, we must understand our own expectations before we can zero in on that. John tells the story of a smart guy that saved him from getting this wrong.

In recent years, cruising boats have got ever bigger, but what’s the safe upper limit, particularly for a shorthanded amateur crew? John used his 30 years of experience voyaging in a 56-foot boat to answer that vital question.

Are catamarans really more comfortable than monohulls? What about trimarans? Like with most things, it depends.

Whenever multihulls are discussed, capsize risk is sure to come up, but monohulls have that problem too, just for different reasons.

One of the most important decisions we need to make when buying an offshore voyaging sailboat is how much sail area, in relation to displacement, boat type, and draft, is right for our style of cruising.

Most cruising boats, both power and sail, have interior arrangements that are designed to look good at a boat show, not work well offshore or when living aboard for extended periods while voyaging. Here’s how to fix that.

John applies risk management thinking to the highly ambiguous subject of keel safety and longevity on older fibreglass boats, starting off with keel types to seek out and those to avoid.

These days the offshore sailing community seems to be fixated on rig automation, but a well-specified and installed set of winches will contribute far more to a successful passage than all that expensive failure-prone stuff.

John takes a deep dive into the tradeoffs between open cockpits, dodgers, enclosures, raised salons and wheelhouses on offshore boats.

A cruising boat without adequate shade and ventilation can make life a living hell once we head for the palm trees. Here’s how to choose a cruising boat that will be comfortable in hot places.

What about buying a brand new boat? That should be great if you have the money, right? Yes, but with caveats. And if you think that buying a brand new boat will enable you to just jump aboard and go voyaging, this sobering story will show another far more likely scenario and highlight the traps to avoid in buying a new boat.

It’s an all too common story: a boat that has been structurally fine for years while sailing inshore starts to come apart as soon as she is sailed offshore. This chapter explains why and will give you a good basis in the underlying engineering theory that will help you choose a boat that won’t let you down offshore.

In this chapter, John applies the theory of cycle loading that Matt explained in the last chapter to come up with solid rules you can apply to boat and gear purchases.

Matt takes a look at the materials available that offshore voyaging boat hulls are generally built of and explains the benefits and drawbacks of each one.

Matt carries on from the last chapter and examines how the various materials voyaging boat hulls are built out of will survive a collision with a hard object.

The sad fact is that many, perhaps most, production sailboats are not built to take the loads imposed by even a moderate collision or grounding. In this chapter Matt, AAC’s Technical Correspondent, explains the engineering and shares what to look for before buying a voyaging boat.

Surveys are expensive so here are six things we should check ourselves first.

There are a huge number of second-hand fibreglass cruising boats for sale, but very few good ones. Here is how to weed out some of the junk.

Whenever the subject of buying a boat comes up, the horror stories about surveys that failed to find serious, or even catastrophic, structural problems are sure to follow. John interviews industry expert Steve D’Antonio to learn how to avoid having our very own survey horror story.

There is endless debate about the effectiveness of moisture meters. Here are the facts from Steve D’ Antonio, who has used one for decades, together with some thoughts from John.

Is there an age when you should buy a motorboat or motorsailer, rather than a sailboat, for offshore voyaging? I take a look at that by answering a question from a reader.

Carrying on from the last chapter, I take a look at motorsailers, again by answering a question from a reader. Do motorsailers make sense for offshore cruising? Read on to find out.

A look at the claims that are made about secondhand boats…and the probable reality.