As most of you know, I’m a sucker for most any boat from the drawing boards of McCurdy and Rhodes. Normally, to get a M&R boat you are looking at custom boats, or those from Hinckley, so deep pockets required.
But, while I was researching something else, I discovered that, back in the 70s, the firm designed some very nice smaller production boats for Heritage Yachts in Canada and Seafarer Yachts in the USA.
Seems to me these might make great starter boats, that will sail better and are better designed for going offshore than many others of the time. They are also way prettier than most: no one can draw a shear-line the way M&R can.
The one pictured above is an Heritage Intrepid 35 that looks well taken care of, with an asking price of a bit over $30k.
Disclaimer
Note that this post is the result of fifteen minutes research and I have no idea how well built, or not, these boats are, or how well they have aged, so do your due diligence.
If you wanted to take the $30,000 Starter Cruiser project:
https://www.morganscloud.com/2020/08/22/us30000-starter-cruiser-part-2-the-boat-we-bought/
and increase the budget to $45,000, then one of these would be a rather nice choice.
In terms of layout, hull shape, rig, size, and performance parameters, the Heritage 35 is very similar to our C&C 35. Over the last few years we’ve found that to be a real sweet spot for balancing affordability, ease of handling, performance under sail, availability of marina space, and livability for short cruises, while still being spacious enough to bring a few friends along.