Lithium batteries, Starlink, big alternators, catamaran, trimaran, or monohull, serial hybrid, parallel hybrid, endless “review1” videos of multi-million dollar boats, which anchor is best…
On and on it goes. How is anyone new to cruising going to sift through all this and actually get out there?
Hi John,
Great advice.
And cruising is one of those skills where one really benefits from respecting the learning curve and working one’s way into cruising greater distances from home and into larger boats. Learn on a small boat where you can jump overboard, stand on the seabed and push yourself off when you run aground. Find local mentors who have been there, done that. And a bit of a fixer-upper allows learning boat repair and maintenance skills where re-doing a botched job and cosmetics matter less.
And have fun.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
All good points…and yes, I have jumped overboard to push the Sea Sprite off a bar I cut too close.
Matt Marsh
September 2, 2025 5:18 pm
Agreed 100%.
Right now, within a half-hour drive of me, there’s a beautiful Northern 29 for $5000 CAD and a well kept C&C 25 for $5800. There’s a Tanzer 7.5 for $3250, including trailer – the thing draws 2’8″ and you can haul it behind any old pickup truck, cutting your annual OpEx by 70% versus a marina-slipped boat. If that’s too dear, how about a Hughes 22, on a trailer, with a 9 hp Evinrude – just $1750.
None of the above are fancy boats. They have practically no “systems” and their maintenance requirements are all things you can do yourself in your spare time. You don’t need an M.Eng in network architecture to make their engine instruments talk to their remote monitoring gateways. You just show up, run through your pre-trip checks, and get underway.
And if you can’t afford the time to own a boat? Rent one. Not all charters are $7000 a week fancy 45-footers. There’s a base near me that’ll give you a professionally maintained, fully equipped, fully checked out Hunter 28 for six days for $2100 CAD (about $1500 American). Another company will accept $375 in exchange for twenty on-water hours in your choice of five small fun boats from 12 to 18 feet, mix-n-match as you like for two full seasons.
I see a lot of people at our Recreational Vessel Courtesy Checks who are taking this approach. They don’t have the cash or the time for a big fancy yacht. But they can toss a cooler and some sleeping bags into a $2000 Alberg 30 whose seller lists it as “need gone just don’t have the time”, and they have just as much fun on their adventure as the guys who spent $200,000 on their Catalina.
Great comment! Really fills in my Tip with some great value boats. The C&C 25 sounds particularly sweet for that little money, ditto the Hughes.
And about inexpensive charters. I had no idea that was a thing. Great to hear. Perhaps an even better solution in many ways, although the trade off is we don’t learn as much about boat care.
Rob Gill
September 2, 2025 6:04 pm
Agree with Matt, chartering is also a viable option which allows options with more space and comfort for those with partners who aren’t “sailors”. We chartered for about five years when the kids were younger and school sports plus dinghy racing restricted our sailing out of the main school holiday.
A spreadsheet I created at the time comparing chartering vs owning a marina based 12 metre cruiser, showed our break even at around 35 charter days per annum. Less days than this and it was better for us to put money into our holiday account and take off to different locations -> no long delivery sails to reach our chosen cruising destination…!
As the kids got older and we had less commitments, we went half shares in a 13 metre yacht for about three years, which was less successful. But I know some folks who made this work fine.
That trade off number of days is really interesting. And, as you say, you got to go anywhere you wanted too. And then there’s the less aggravation factor that skews for chartering on top of the money.
Hi John, yes less aggravation, but on the flip side less satisfaction that comes with having the boat just as you want it -> ie. no cheap CQR knock-off anchor up on the bow with hardly enough chain.
I should have mentioned my spreadsheet was on the basis of “like-for-like”, so say owning a 12 m yacht on a marina vs chartering one of the same era and standard. I included a charge for the cost of capital.
Good point on the downsides of chartering. Still, I think your approach makes a lot of sense, particularly not being burdened with a boat at the time of life when focused on raising children and that’s mid-career.
Eric Klem
September 3, 2025 1:40 pm
Hi John,
I love the message of this post.
Around here, my recommendation to people is usually to join one of the sailing clubs that have club boats. I can think of 4 right now around Boston and I am sure I am missing some. They range from little daysailors to actual cruising boats. We have 1 in particular that stands out to me as being great for people interested in going cruising: Boston sailing center. You buy a membership based on boat size and the larger memberships entitle you to take boats out overnight or even for a week at a time. When I last looked, the cost for a membership with the same size boat as ours was about equal to our yearly ownership cost (100% DIY maintenance) but you don’t have the upfront cost of buying the boat and you don’t have to put in all the sweat equity.
The pros of this:
No need to be on a long mooring waitlist or spend huge $$ for a slip which is owned by a PE firm
No need to do maintenance
They have instructors and classes so it is a 1 stop shop
Priced fairly
The cons are:
The cruising boats are a bit blah
They are not maintained to my standards
I want to cruise further than they allow
You don’t learn how to maintain a boat
To me, this is a great way to get started and if you really like it, you can then move to your own boat and have a much higher chance of getting it right the first time. Many people would be happy to do the sailing club thing forever. Our mooring fields are full of 30-50′ sailboats that function as daysailers and get used <10X a season which is nuts. If you are going to own your own boat, I totally think you should start small and simple as you suggest and then once you have the experience, you can move up but buying a first boat that is 40′ after completing a few ASA classes makes no sense to me.
Great to hear that there are those sorts of clubs in your area. Sadly, at least as far as I know, we don’t have anything like that in Atlantic Canada.
This way of going cruising is really common in Europe. Some years ago I taught a high latitude cruising course in Munich. There were about 40 students, all holders of the Yacht Master, or equivalent, all very experienced, and just one boat owner.
And I totally agree that buying a boat 40 foot boat as a start is not the way to go.
Hi, so I am maybe not the best suited to comment here, as my first and only boat is a 40 foot yacht (also I had exactly zero certifications, training or experience, don’t follow my example please). I knew what I wanted to use it for and saved for years to afford it, and anything less would have been somewhat pointless for my use case (winter expedition sailing in the Arctic). However, the message of this post, to just get out there, is a nice reminder anyway! When I got the boat, there was a lot that needed to be fixed and upgraded, still I spent the first winter living aboard and sailing in the northern parts of Norway looking for whales. All went mostly fine. A few steep learning curves, but still.
It is scarily easy to get hung up on all the things that need to be at a certain level/standard! I have now been sailing and living aboard nonstop since March, and for over a year if you take into account the time I had to fly home for a few months to work last winter. My yacht is now probably in the upper range when it comes to what level it is maintained etc (I have a low tolerance of things not working as it should), but there’s still SO many things that «should» be improved. However, I also think my regular cruising area (northern Norway in winter) is a tad more challenging than what most sailors do, and it still works fine!
A lot can be compensated for with good procedures, good seamanship, good weather planning, and conservative and safe decision making. Smaller boat, too flimsy ground tackle, less robust rig, smaller tankage, not so reliable engine… these are all relative things. Any ground tackle would be too flimsy if the wind is strong enough, it’s just that you need to adjust the threshold a bit to compensate. No AIS? Keep a more attentive lookout! No autopilot? Learn to trim the sails more balanced. I had to do exactly this for 6 months before I could afford to buy a new one when my old autopilot died on me. By the end of it, I felt pretty confident in trimming the sails and just locking the rudder and do other things for extended time before corrections on the wheel was needed.
I think the point is, every boat have its limits, you just have to take those into account, and have a safety margin in the things you do. In the end, usually even the crappiest sailboats are still a lot safer and better at sea than even a pretty fancy motorboat. And people do go out in a motorboat, with a single engine, in bad weather, close to a lee shore… just saying! Good decisions make you have fun and stay safe. Not the equipment. Good equipment just lets you have fun and stay safe in rougher and more challenging conditions. Good equipment and comfort is also a false sense of security and may lead you into dangerous situations. For example, my ground tackle is so sturdy, that the day it doesn’t hold my boat, I would never survive being washed ashore in the waves from the storm that is able to drag the boat.
Well… admittedly directly buying a 40 foot boat was probably not the smartest decision I have made… but it was the boat I had available to me! And just getting out there, feel the forces of the wind and ocean, make a few mistakes, learn, have fun…
This comment got long, I’m currently stuck on anchor with a lot of time, so you are the victims of my current «boredom», but just a last paragraph: you really struck a nerve in your first paragraph John: I actually need a high output alternator, as I currently just have the stock Volvo Penta which gives me maybe 25 amps at max RPM. Today I had to stop and stay a day on anchor before continuing sailing to let the solar and wind charge the batteries for the next passage tomorrow. So it seems I don’t NEED a new alternator. NOT buying it (and the Wakespeed) means I can keep cruising for another two months. Maybe even three. Would be nice with a better one, but it’s also nice to be out cruising instead of working.
Great comment with lot of very good points. I particularly like your thinking that learning skills is way more important than buying gear. That’s unusual and I think that is a lot of why you pulled this very challenging path to cruising off without disaster.
And it’s good to have the point made that there are other ways of getting out there than buying a small boat first.
For others, if I remember correctly Arne hired Colin Speedie to help him choose a boat, thereby reducing the risk of buying the wrong boat. Do I have that right, Arne?
Yes, you do have it right, I hired Colin. Since the boat I was interested in was an OVNI, and through surfing online I randomly found Colin, who did various consultant services, AND was a previous OVNI owner. It was during Covid, so he couldn’t travel and look at the boat, but his advice and insights were very helpful! Not the least just as peace of mind, and where I should actually spend my money first when upgrading the boat for my use case. I actually didn’t plan on using someone like that, but I think that is probably the best advice I can give anyone in a similar situation as mine (and probably anyone buying a boat)! Probably someone else than Colin could also do it, but just get a 3rd person to look at your boat for you. Not a friend or someone who will «pet your back», but someone you pay to be critical! But now we’re outside the topic of this article. 🙂
The opening picture looks just like our Tanzer 22. We bought it new in 1981 and still have it. Its been everywhere on the US east coast from north of Baltimore to St Augustine and the entire length of the Tennessee River with long stays in the Chesapeake Bay and North Carolina sounds. We were sailing it on Watauga Lake in the Tennessee mountains last weekend.
I wish I could post a picture here, but https://irish-eyes-to-the-bahamas.blogspot.com/2015/ should get you to a page in my wife’s Bahamas blog with a photo of a Pennsylvania registered Catalina 22 that we ran into in the Exumas and again in Marsh Harbour. He was in the same places and seeing the same things as the boys in the million dollar boats.
A Tanzer 22 followed me into the Cuttyhunk channel last Tuesday towing a small molded kayak as his dinghy. He anchored while most of the larger boats caughed up the $60 for a mooring. Later, he paddled up to say it was his first visit to the island and asked where the dinghy dock was located. I’m sure he enjoyed the island and paid a third of the quote I just got for a new mainsail to buy his entire boat.
Last few years with aged parents I don’t get out in the boat much, but this is such a refreshing and important post which reminds me that when I have time again, I must just get out on the water.
Once when young I got paid to paint a boat belonging to a friend and was asked to tow it to the coast for launch (at Amble in NE England). I still remember the evening when I sat in the bar with the marina manager and talked boats. I had a lovely 21-foot gaffer but talked a lot about the boats I fancied for my cruising dreams – he said, “you have a boat and say you want to go sailing – GO SAILING”. I took that onboard and the following year gave up my job, borrowed a bit of money and sailed up to the West Coast of Scotland, where I spent two long seasons. I look back now and am so grateful for that advice – I have so many happy memories that have stayed with me and I learned so much.
The experience helped me to go on to work in the marine field and in the years since I have enthusiastically sold a lot of marine electronics, but I do worry now that it is getting out of hand and setting up the electronics could be seen as a completly separate hobby – which might just replace the sailing if one is not careful.
Ken Ahrens
September 8, 2025 12:49 pm
100% accurate, my first boat was simple (1969 Cal 34) and I was able to get out and have fun. Caught the bug, bought a much larger cruiser (51′ Kaufman) from the eighties. And now have spent many, many thousands and 4 years and am now just to the point that I can start taking her out, but of course still a lot to do on her!
Good warning for others. Good news is you had all the fun from your Cal to motivate you on the big boat, so way better than starting off with a big fix up project.
David Branyon
September 8, 2025 5:22 pm
I had big plans to buy something in the low 40′ range and go for a season in the Caribbean as a start. If it went badly, we’d sell after the 8 months or so. If it went really well, might trek up the Atlantic coast. Friend said to absolutely buy a “bumper boat” first. He said that’s one you bump into slips, mooring balls, ground occasionally, etc. Then, after you get done with all that, you buy the “good boat”. Lol. Sounded like an idea!
Want to buy mine? We’ve been cruising the Caribbean for the last two years and are contemplating the long haul back to California… starting to think it would be easier to just buy another boat there! Too bad selling is such a hassle.
Best of luck in your search!
Andy Hawks
September 9, 2025 9:42 pm
Good perspective – I have seen plenty of Tanzer 22’s (and similar) offered for far less or even given away in (basically) cruisable condition. Get out there!
Stein Varjord
September 10, 2025 2:19 pm
Hi John,
I very much agree with all of this, of course. On top of the advantages of small boats already mentioned, there is one more that I consider essential. My standard claim: “Learning to sail on a large cruising sailboat
is like learning to ride a bike
by taking the bus.”
It’s slightly exaggerated, meant to make a point and be an entertaining thought, but still more real than many want to believe. As I’ve said on this site several times earlier, I think experience from a small fast dinghy is the only way to become a properly competent sailor. On small boats:
– Signals are strong, so we notice most of them.
– Signals are quick, so we connect cause and effect.
– Signals are easy to interpret, so we understand what to do.
– Forces are small, it feels safe and is huge fun, so we keep doing it.
Small boats behave like an exaggeration of big boats. When the weather is heavy enough, all boats behave like dinghies, often poorly designed ones. That brings me to my second frequent claim:
“Every single really competent ocean sailor, ever, had experience from sailing dinghies. All others are dangerously incompetent.”
Again this is shaped to make a point, perhaps tease, but I do think it’s true. I’ve sailed with a large number of people, and much on very fast boats. When in big waves and strong winds, new people steer under guidance. Those who have sailed dinghies need no explanation. They just do the right things every time.
Those who are experienced sailors, but never sailed small fast boats, dinghies, always make mistakes that need intervention, until they gradually get it. They never benefitted from the bullet points above. They are incompetent at the helm. This type of mistakes are harmless on dinghies and small boats. If the first time is on a cruiser in a storm, it could be the last mistake you make.
There’s nothing difficult about this. Anyone will get it easily. On small lively boats these skills come by default. Not all pocket cruisers are ideal for learning all of what I think about here. A Lazer dinghy might be the perfect tool. Still, all the mentioned bullet points are fully valid. The learning speed and quality is waaaay better than on any bigger boat. The transition to planing and surfing and its related issues is probably not available for practicing, but the level of “feel” gained on small boats gives you enough automatic reaction to probably get also that right.
Starting on small boats is definitely the right way. If you didn’t, there’s no excuse for not sailing a small fast dinghy and gaining the skills, while having the best fun ever. Life may seem hard sometimes, but in this case it’s just reward all the way! 🙂
David Freeman
September 11, 2025 10:00 am
I can’t agree with you more! Our first boat was an old Ericson 27, while bigger and more complicated than your examples, it only cost us $2,700 US and was perfect for us to learn on and explore Lake Superior. Plus, we were easily able to sell it a couple years later and get our money back. While a larger boat is more comfortable, there are so many advantages to a small boat, especially when you are first learning and trying to figure out if sailing and cruising are even something you want to do. It is also important to emphasize the cost savings of a trailerable boat vs one that is kept at a marina or on the hard. You could easily spend as much as you paid for the boat in marina fees and insurance if you keep a $2000-$5000 boat at a marina during the sailing season and on the hard at a boatyard during the winter. In many ways the annual costs of storing and maintaining the boat are as important, if not more important, than the purchase price. You will likely get most of the purchase price back on a older simple boat when you decide to sell it, but everything you shell out to store, maintain, and insure the boat are down the drain.
I would also add that our current boat is still very simple, but relatively inexpensive to maintain because we can do almost all the work ourselves. The cost of hiring people to work on your boat is very high and the quality of the work and the time frame for when work is completed can lead to a lot of frustration. Learning to maintain a small simple boat is great way to learn to maintain and fix things. Cruising is about sailing, but there is also a lot of time spent maintaining even a very simple boat. On our current 35ft boat we have a windvane for steering, no refrigerator, auto pilot, or other power hungry devices so we can easily keep everything charged with simple 300 watt solar system and a small conventional battery bank.
Over the last 10 years we have spent 6 to 18 months at a time cruising on two different boats, first a Vancouver 27 and now a Wylo II 35.5. We have lots of fond memories cruising the Eastern and Western Caribbean, Bahamas, and the US/Canada as far north as Labrador with offshore passages of up to 10 days. Simplicity has its benefits and while many, if not most people will want more creature comforts, hauling water in jugs, showering with a bucket, and sailing a simple boat allows us to spend our time cruising rather than fixing things, not to mention that if we purchased a boat for $100K or more we would have to work all the time and would never be able to sail because the cost of insuring and maintaining the boat would be so much higher.
Once you are out cruising you meet people on million dollar catamarans, old boats someone got for free, and everything in between.
Great comment with a lot of really good points. Your point about storage and marina costs is particularly important, as is the benefits of keeping it simple.
Bob Hodges
September 13, 2025 10:44 am
I’m going to add to the list of small and affordable cruisers the first generation of smaller Corsair Marine trimarans that include the Corsair 24 Mk.I and the Corsair 24 Mk. II. The boats are stable, fast, easy to trailer (one person can step/unstep the mast and launch the boat) and more than anything super fun to sail. They have enough cabin space for a couple to easily weekend cruise (typically including an alcohol stove and v-berth porta potty) so a 1-2 week adventure is certainly doable with these boats (and note you could store about 100 lbs of gear in each float without affecting the performance of the boat). The large trampolines offer an option for an open air sleeping area with a view of the stars if the conditions allow.
They are pricier, most being in the $20k up to $40k range but they are solid investments as they hold their value extremely well and are very solidly built.
Avon Lookmire
September 14, 2025 8:01 am
Hi John,
New subscriber and first time commenter here, but I feel we are perhaps in the camp of having recently done what you suggest and are thrilled with that decision.
We are a family of 6 with kids currently aged 20,18, 11 and 7. My husband grew up in a fairly nautical family spending summers messing around in (mostly) small boats but I’m a newbie. 6 years ago a very experienced sailor friend took all 6 of us on a 5 day coastal cruising adventure in his 45 ft boat and I absolutely got bitten by the cruising bug! We continued having adventures with our friend about once a year and I joined the local dinghy sailing club one summer with the kids and learned the basics (I read somewhere that the way to turn a dream into a plan is to start taking small, logical steps towards it…). I dreamed of real cruising but a boat for 6?!? Boats big enough for us all seemed to be at least $100,000 if not several times that!
Plus – I knew enough to feel intuitively that even if someone were to GIVE me one of the boats I dreamed of, I was in no way qualified to own any of them!
After our last trip to our friend’s boat (did I mention it was a 10 hour drive from home?) my husband announced “I think I’ve found us a boat…” A Carter 33 that the previous owner had spent the last 7 years cruising from the other side of the world. And her price tag was NZ$15,000 (US$9000 – a tenth of the cheapest boats I had been looking at). It was money we could actually scrape together since I had started saving already.
We showed the ad to our experienced sailing friend and as it was in his town, he offered to look at it for us.
After a whole day spent going over every inch of the boat in great detail his report back was: Small but awesome – I would happily cross oceans in this boat as is. So now the question is – do you want a 33 foot boat??
And my reply was along the lines of “go small, go now” rather than wait and save so long it never happens.
33 feet is not all that small, but for a family of 6 maybe it qualifies! 😉
When we took possession that very first day, my overwhelming impression was “oh! She’s like a dinghy made big!”. As a beginner, I could learn this boat. That was January this year and I was nervous to even take the helm. By late Feb I knew I could sail her myself if push came to shove, though I’m very much still learning and practicing the basics (and AAC is accelerating that learning for sure!).
We are so delighted with our choice, she is the right boat. The learning curve has been incredible. The day after we got her we were coming back in from our first day sail, motoring back in around sandbanks with sails already down, and the motor died (diesel bug – should have replaced the fuel but glad we didn’t!). Our mentor friend orchestrated our wee family through this unexpected but highly successful sail back to our mooring, around a long meander of sandbanks and we could not have been more jubilant when we got there! Seriously, it was like, “today was the best day EVER! Our motor died and you could not have engineered a better learning experience! It was amazing!”. Point being, learning is doing. Being told to be mindful of a lee shore 100 times is no match for experiencing a sudden unexpected loss of propulsion in a narrow channel. I will remember that day forever, in a good way, and I will never take my motor for granted.
So yes – just go cruising! I have to pinch myself about the amazing experiences our boat has taken us to already in little more than 6 months, and once you have a boat, the world is yours to explore, in ever increasing increments 🙂
What a wonderful story full of great lessons for all of us, thanks for sharing it. I was particularly taken with your decision to learn the basics in a dinghy and your point about learning by doing. Also good on your mentor, who sounds just about perfect for the role. A good reminder for all of us more experienced sailors that we should be ready to help those starting out.
Hi John,
Great advice.
And cruising is one of those skills where one really benefits from respecting the learning curve and working one’s way into cruising greater distances from home and into larger boats. Learn on a small boat where you can jump overboard, stand on the seabed and push yourself off when you run aground. Find local mentors who have been there, done that. And a bit of a fixer-upper allows learning boat repair and maintenance skills where re-doing a botched job and cosmetics matter less.
And have fun.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
Hi Dick,
All good points…and yes, I have jumped overboard to push the Sea Sprite off a bar I cut too close.
Agreed 100%.
Right now, within a half-hour drive of me, there’s a beautiful Northern 29 for $5000 CAD and a well kept C&C 25 for $5800. There’s a Tanzer 7.5 for $3250, including trailer – the thing draws 2’8″ and you can haul it behind any old pickup truck, cutting your annual OpEx by 70% versus a marina-slipped boat. If that’s too dear, how about a Hughes 22, on a trailer, with a 9 hp Evinrude – just $1750.
None of the above are fancy boats. They have practically no “systems” and their maintenance requirements are all things you can do yourself in your spare time. You don’t need an M.Eng in network architecture to make their engine instruments talk to their remote monitoring gateways. You just show up, run through your pre-trip checks, and get underway.
And if you can’t afford the time to own a boat? Rent one. Not all charters are $7000 a week fancy 45-footers. There’s a base near me that’ll give you a professionally maintained, fully equipped, fully checked out Hunter 28 for six days for $2100 CAD (about $1500 American). Another company will accept $375 in exchange for twenty on-water hours in your choice of five small fun boats from 12 to 18 feet, mix-n-match as you like for two full seasons.
I see a lot of people at our Recreational Vessel Courtesy Checks who are taking this approach. They don’t have the cash or the time for a big fancy yacht. But they can toss a cooler and some sleeping bags into a $2000 Alberg 30 whose seller lists it as “need gone just don’t have the time”, and they have just as much fun on their adventure as the guys who spent $200,000 on their Catalina.
Hi Matt,
Great comment! Really fills in my Tip with some great value boats. The C&C 25 sounds particularly sweet for that little money, ditto the Hughes.
And about inexpensive charters. I had no idea that was a thing. Great to hear. Perhaps an even better solution in many ways, although the trade off is we don’t learn as much about boat care.
Agree with Matt, chartering is also a viable option which allows options with more space and comfort for those with partners who aren’t “sailors”. We chartered for about five years when the kids were younger and school sports plus dinghy racing restricted our sailing out of the main school holiday.
A spreadsheet I created at the time comparing chartering vs owning a marina based 12 metre cruiser, showed our break even at around 35 charter days per annum. Less days than this and it was better for us to put money into our holiday account and take off to different locations -> no long delivery sails to reach our chosen cruising destination…!
As the kids got older and we had less commitments, we went half shares in a 13 metre yacht for about three years, which was less successful. But I know some folks who made this work fine.
Hi Rob,
That trade off number of days is really interesting. And, as you say, you got to go anywhere you wanted too. And then there’s the less aggravation factor that skews for chartering on top of the money.
Hi John, yes less aggravation, but on the flip side less satisfaction that comes with having the boat just as you want it -> ie. no cheap CQR knock-off anchor up on the bow with hardly enough chain.
I should have mentioned my spreadsheet was on the basis of “like-for-like”, so say owning a 12 m yacht on a marina vs chartering one of the same era and standard. I included a charge for the cost of capital.
Hi Rob,
Good point on the downsides of chartering. Still, I think your approach makes a lot of sense, particularly not being burdened with a boat at the time of life when focused on raising children and that’s mid-career.
Hi John,
I love the message of this post.
Around here, my recommendation to people is usually to join one of the sailing clubs that have club boats. I can think of 4 right now around Boston and I am sure I am missing some. They range from little daysailors to actual cruising boats. We have 1 in particular that stands out to me as being great for people interested in going cruising: Boston sailing center. You buy a membership based on boat size and the larger memberships entitle you to take boats out overnight or even for a week at a time. When I last looked, the cost for a membership with the same size boat as ours was about equal to our yearly ownership cost (100% DIY maintenance) but you don’t have the upfront cost of buying the boat and you don’t have to put in all the sweat equity.
The pros of this:
The cons are:
To me, this is a great way to get started and if you really like it, you can then move to your own boat and have a much higher chance of getting it right the first time. Many people would be happy to do the sailing club thing forever. Our mooring fields are full of 30-50′ sailboats that function as daysailers and get used <10X a season which is nuts. If you are going to own your own boat, I totally think you should start small and simple as you suggest and then once you have the experience, you can move up but buying a first boat that is 40′ after completing a few ASA classes makes no sense to me.
Eric
Hi Eric,
Great to hear that there are those sorts of clubs in your area. Sadly, at least as far as I know, we don’t have anything like that in Atlantic Canada.
This way of going cruising is really common in Europe. Some years ago I taught a high latitude cruising course in Munich. There were about 40 students, all holders of the Yacht Master, or equivalent, all very experienced, and just one boat owner.
And I totally agree that buying a boat 40 foot boat as a start is not the way to go.
Hi, so I am maybe not the best suited to comment here, as my first and only boat is a 40 foot yacht (also I had exactly zero certifications, training or experience, don’t follow my example please). I knew what I wanted to use it for and saved for years to afford it, and anything less would have been somewhat pointless for my use case (winter expedition sailing in the Arctic). However, the message of this post, to just get out there, is a nice reminder anyway! When I got the boat, there was a lot that needed to be fixed and upgraded, still I spent the first winter living aboard and sailing in the northern parts of Norway looking for whales. All went mostly fine. A few steep learning curves, but still.
It is scarily easy to get hung up on all the things that need to be at a certain level/standard! I have now been sailing and living aboard nonstop since March, and for over a year if you take into account the time I had to fly home for a few months to work last winter. My yacht is now probably in the upper range when it comes to what level it is maintained etc (I have a low tolerance of things not working as it should), but there’s still SO many things that «should» be improved. However, I also think my regular cruising area (northern Norway in winter) is a tad more challenging than what most sailors do, and it still works fine!
A lot can be compensated for with good procedures, good seamanship, good weather planning, and conservative and safe decision making. Smaller boat, too flimsy ground tackle, less robust rig, smaller tankage, not so reliable engine… these are all relative things. Any ground tackle would be too flimsy if the wind is strong enough, it’s just that you need to adjust the threshold a bit to compensate. No AIS? Keep a more attentive lookout! No autopilot? Learn to trim the sails more balanced. I had to do exactly this for 6 months before I could afford to buy a new one when my old autopilot died on me. By the end of it, I felt pretty confident in trimming the sails and just locking the rudder and do other things for extended time before corrections on the wheel was needed.
I think the point is, every boat have its limits, you just have to take those into account, and have a safety margin in the things you do. In the end, usually even the crappiest sailboats are still a lot safer and better at sea than even a pretty fancy motorboat. And people do go out in a motorboat, with a single engine, in bad weather, close to a lee shore… just saying! Good decisions make you have fun and stay safe. Not the equipment. Good equipment just lets you have fun and stay safe in rougher and more challenging conditions. Good equipment and comfort is also a false sense of security and may lead you into dangerous situations. For example, my ground tackle is so sturdy, that the day it doesn’t hold my boat, I would never survive being washed ashore in the waves from the storm that is able to drag the boat.
Well… admittedly directly buying a 40 foot boat was probably not the smartest decision I have made… but it was the boat I had available to me! And just getting out there, feel the forces of the wind and ocean, make a few mistakes, learn, have fun…
This comment got long, I’m currently stuck on anchor with a lot of time, so you are the victims of my current «boredom», but just a last paragraph: you really struck a nerve in your first paragraph John: I actually need a high output alternator, as I currently just have the stock Volvo Penta which gives me maybe 25 amps at max RPM. Today I had to stop and stay a day on anchor before continuing sailing to let the solar and wind charge the batteries for the next passage tomorrow. So it seems I don’t NEED a new alternator. NOT buying it (and the Wakespeed) means I can keep cruising for another two months. Maybe even three. Would be nice with a better one, but it’s also nice to be out cruising instead of working.
There, I’ll stop writing! 🙂
Hi Arne,
Great comment with lot of very good points. I particularly like your thinking that learning skills is way more important than buying gear. That’s unusual and I think that is a lot of why you pulled this very challenging path to cruising off without disaster.
And it’s good to have the point made that there are other ways of getting out there than buying a small boat first.
For others, if I remember correctly Arne hired Colin Speedie to help him choose a boat, thereby reducing the risk of buying the wrong boat. Do I have that right, Arne?
Yes, you do have it right, I hired Colin. Since the boat I was interested in was an OVNI, and through surfing online I randomly found Colin, who did various consultant services, AND was a previous OVNI owner. It was during Covid, so he couldn’t travel and look at the boat, but his advice and insights were very helpful! Not the least just as peace of mind, and where I should actually spend my money first when upgrading the boat for my use case. I actually didn’t plan on using someone like that, but I think that is probably the best advice I can give anyone in a similar situation as mine (and probably anyone buying a boat)! Probably someone else than Colin could also do it, but just get a 3rd person to look at your boat for you. Not a friend or someone who will «pet your back», but someone you pay to be critical! But now we’re outside the topic of this article. 🙂
Hi Arne,
Good advice: https://www.morganscloud.com/2024/12/17/8-offshore-cruising-boat-gear-evaluation-tips/ (#8)
The opening picture looks just like our Tanzer 22. We bought it new in 1981 and still have it. Its been everywhere on the US east coast from north of Baltimore to St Augustine and the entire length of the Tennessee River with long stays in the Chesapeake Bay and North Carolina sounds. We were sailing it on Watauga Lake in the Tennessee mountains last weekend.
I wish I could post a picture here, but https://irish-eyes-to-the-bahamas.blogspot.com/2015/ should get you to a page in my wife’s Bahamas blog with a photo of a Pennsylvania registered Catalina 22 that we ran into in the Exumas and again in Marsh Harbour. He was in the same places and seeing the same things as the boys in the million dollar boats.
Hi William,
Great to hear that you have had so many great times on a Tanzer, good on you.
By the way, you can post a photo in the comments: https://www.morganscloud.com/2013/11/10/aac-comment-guide-lines/
A Tanzer 22 followed me into the Cuttyhunk channel last Tuesday towing a small molded kayak as his dinghy. He anchored while most of the larger boats caughed up the $60 for a mooring. Later, he paddled up to say it was his first visit to the island and asked where the dinghy dock was located. I’m sure he enjoyed the island and paid a third of the quote I just got for a new mainsail to buy his entire boat.
Hi Jesse,
So true!
Last few years with aged parents I don’t get out in the boat much, but this is such a refreshing and important post which reminds me that when I have time again, I must just get out on the water.
Once when young I got paid to paint a boat belonging to a friend and was asked to tow it to the coast for launch (at Amble in NE England). I still remember the evening when I sat in the bar with the marina manager and talked boats. I had a lovely 21-foot gaffer but talked a lot about the boats I fancied for my cruising dreams – he said, “you have a boat and say you want to go sailing – GO SAILING”. I took that onboard and the following year gave up my job, borrowed a bit of money and sailed up to the West Coast of Scotland, where I spent two long seasons. I look back now and am so grateful for that advice – I have so many happy memories that have stayed with me and I learned so much.
The experience helped me to go on to work in the marine field and in the years since I have enthusiastically sold a lot of marine electronics, but I do worry now that it is getting out of hand and setting up the electronics could be seen as a completly separate hobby – which might just replace the sailing if one is not careful.
100% accurate, my first boat was simple (1969 Cal 34) and I was able to get out and have fun. Caught the bug, bought a much larger cruiser (51′ Kaufman) from the eighties. And now have spent many, many thousands and 4 years and am now just to the point that I can start taking her out, but of course still a lot to do on her!
Hi Ken,
Good warning for others. Good news is you had all the fun from your Cal to motivate you on the big boat, so way better than starting off with a big fix up project.
I had big plans to buy something in the low 40′ range and go for a season in the Caribbean as a start. If it went badly, we’d sell after the 8 months or so. If it went really well, might trek up the Atlantic coast. Friend said to absolutely buy a “bumper boat” first. He said that’s one you bump into slips, mooring balls, ground occasionally, etc. Then, after you get done with all that, you buy the “good boat”. Lol. Sounded like an idea!
Want to buy mine? We’ve been cruising the Caribbean for the last two years and are contemplating the long haul back to California… starting to think it would be easier to just buy another boat there! Too bad selling is such a hassle.
Best of luck in your search!
Good perspective – I have seen plenty of Tanzer 22’s (and similar) offered for far less or even given away in (basically) cruisable condition. Get out there!
Hi John,
I very much agree with all of this, of course. On top of the advantages of small boats already mentioned, there is one more that I consider essential. My standard claim: “Learning to sail on a large cruising sailboat
is like learning to ride a bike
by taking the bus.”
It’s slightly exaggerated, meant to make a point and be an entertaining thought, but still more real than many want to believe. As I’ve said on this site several times earlier, I think experience from a small fast dinghy is the only way to become a properly competent sailor. On small boats:
– Signals are strong, so we notice most of them.
– Signals are quick, so we connect cause and effect.
– Signals are easy to interpret, so we understand what to do.
– Forces are small, it feels safe and is huge fun, so we keep doing it.
Small boats behave like an exaggeration of big boats. When the weather is heavy enough, all boats behave like dinghies, often poorly designed ones. That brings me to my second frequent claim:
“Every single really competent ocean sailor, ever, had experience from sailing dinghies. All others are dangerously incompetent.”
Again this is shaped to make a point, perhaps tease, but I do think it’s true. I’ve sailed with a large number of people, and much on very fast boats. When in big waves and strong winds, new people steer under guidance. Those who have sailed dinghies need no explanation. They just do the right things every time.
Those who are experienced sailors, but never sailed small fast boats, dinghies, always make mistakes that need intervention, until they gradually get it. They never benefitted from the bullet points above. They are incompetent at the helm. This type of mistakes are harmless on dinghies and small boats. If the first time is on a cruiser in a storm, it could be the last mistake you make.
There’s nothing difficult about this. Anyone will get it easily. On small lively boats these skills come by default. Not all pocket cruisers are ideal for learning all of what I think about here. A Lazer dinghy might be the perfect tool. Still, all the mentioned bullet points are fully valid. The learning speed and quality is waaaay better than on any bigger boat. The transition to planing and surfing and its related issues is probably not available for practicing, but the level of “feel” gained on small boats gives you enough automatic reaction to probably get also that right.
Starting on small boats is definitely the right way. If you didn’t, there’s no excuse for not sailing a small fast dinghy and gaining the skills, while having the best fun ever. Life may seem hard sometimes, but in this case it’s just reward all the way! 🙂
I can’t agree with you more! Our first boat was an old Ericson 27, while bigger and more complicated than your examples, it only cost us $2,700 US and was perfect for us to learn on and explore Lake Superior. Plus, we were easily able to sell it a couple years later and get our money back. While a larger boat is more comfortable, there are so many advantages to a small boat, especially when you are first learning and trying to figure out if sailing and cruising are even something you want to do. It is also important to emphasize the cost savings of a trailerable boat vs one that is kept at a marina or on the hard. You could easily spend as much as you paid for the boat in marina fees and insurance if you keep a $2000-$5000 boat at a marina during the sailing season and on the hard at a boatyard during the winter. In many ways the annual costs of storing and maintaining the boat are as important, if not more important, than the purchase price. You will likely get most of the purchase price back on a older simple boat when you decide to sell it, but everything you shell out to store, maintain, and insure the boat are down the drain.
I would also add that our current boat is still very simple, but relatively inexpensive to maintain because we can do almost all the work ourselves. The cost of hiring people to work on your boat is very high and the quality of the work and the time frame for when work is completed can lead to a lot of frustration. Learning to maintain a small simple boat is great way to learn to maintain and fix things. Cruising is about sailing, but there is also a lot of time spent maintaining even a very simple boat. On our current 35ft boat we have a windvane for steering, no refrigerator, auto pilot, or other power hungry devices so we can easily keep everything charged with simple 300 watt solar system and a small conventional battery bank.
Over the last 10 years we have spent 6 to 18 months at a time cruising on two different boats, first a Vancouver 27 and now a Wylo II 35.5. We have lots of fond memories cruising the Eastern and Western Caribbean, Bahamas, and the US/Canada as far north as Labrador with offshore passages of up to 10 days. Simplicity has its benefits and while many, if not most people will want more creature comforts, hauling water in jugs, showering with a bucket, and sailing a simple boat allows us to spend our time cruising rather than fixing things, not to mention that if we purchased a boat for $100K or more we would have to work all the time and would never be able to sail because the cost of insuring and maintaining the boat would be so much higher.
Once you are out cruising you meet people on million dollar catamarans, old boats someone got for free, and everything in between.
Just go cruising!
Hi David,
Great comment with a lot of really good points. Your point about storage and marina costs is particularly important, as is the benefits of keeping it simple.
I’m going to add to the list of small and affordable cruisers the first generation of smaller Corsair Marine trimarans that include the Corsair 24 Mk.I and the Corsair 24 Mk. II. The boats are stable, fast, easy to trailer (one person can step/unstep the mast and launch the boat) and more than anything super fun to sail. They have enough cabin space for a couple to easily weekend cruise (typically including an alcohol stove and v-berth porta potty) so a 1-2 week adventure is certainly doable with these boats (and note you could store about 100 lbs of gear in each float without affecting the performance of the boat). The large trampolines offer an option for an open air sleeping area with a view of the stars if the conditions allow.
They are pricier, most being in the $20k up to $40k range but they are solid investments as they hold their value extremely well and are very solidly built.
Hi John,
New subscriber and first time commenter here, but I feel we are perhaps in the camp of having recently done what you suggest and are thrilled with that decision.
We are a family of 6 with kids currently aged 20,18, 11 and 7. My husband grew up in a fairly nautical family spending summers messing around in (mostly) small boats but I’m a newbie. 6 years ago a very experienced sailor friend took all 6 of us on a 5 day coastal cruising adventure in his 45 ft boat and I absolutely got bitten by the cruising bug! We continued having adventures with our friend about once a year and I joined the local dinghy sailing club one summer with the kids and learned the basics (I read somewhere that the way to turn a dream into a plan is to start taking small, logical steps towards it…). I dreamed of real cruising but a boat for 6?!? Boats big enough for us all seemed to be at least $100,000 if not several times that!
Plus – I knew enough to feel intuitively that even if someone were to GIVE me one of the boats I dreamed of, I was in no way qualified to own any of them!
After our last trip to our friend’s boat (did I mention it was a 10 hour drive from home?) my husband announced “I think I’ve found us a boat…” A Carter 33 that the previous owner had spent the last 7 years cruising from the other side of the world. And her price tag was NZ$15,000 (US$9000 – a tenth of the cheapest boats I had been looking at). It was money we could actually scrape together since I had started saving already.
We showed the ad to our experienced sailing friend and as it was in his town, he offered to look at it for us.
After a whole day spent going over every inch of the boat in great detail his report back was: Small but awesome – I would happily cross oceans in this boat as is. So now the question is – do you want a 33 foot boat??
And my reply was along the lines of “go small, go now” rather than wait and save so long it never happens.
33 feet is not all that small, but for a family of 6 maybe it qualifies! 😉
When we took possession that very first day, my overwhelming impression was “oh! She’s like a dinghy made big!”. As a beginner, I could learn this boat. That was January this year and I was nervous to even take the helm. By late Feb I knew I could sail her myself if push came to shove, though I’m very much still learning and practicing the basics (and AAC is accelerating that learning for sure!).
We are so delighted with our choice, she is the right boat. The learning curve has been incredible. The day after we got her we were coming back in from our first day sail, motoring back in around sandbanks with sails already down, and the motor died (diesel bug – should have replaced the fuel but glad we didn’t!). Our mentor friend orchestrated our wee family through this unexpected but highly successful sail back to our mooring, around a long meander of sandbanks and we could not have been more jubilant when we got there! Seriously, it was like, “today was the best day EVER! Our motor died and you could not have engineered a better learning experience! It was amazing!”. Point being, learning is doing. Being told to be mindful of a lee shore 100 times is no match for experiencing a sudden unexpected loss of propulsion in a narrow channel. I will remember that day forever, in a good way, and I will never take my motor for granted.
So yes – just go cruising! I have to pinch myself about the amazing experiences our boat has taken us to already in little more than 6 months, and once you have a boat, the world is yours to explore, in ever increasing increments 🙂
Hi Avon,
What a wonderful story full of great lessons for all of us, thanks for sharing it. I was particularly taken with your decision to learn the basics in a dinghy and your point about learning by doing. Also good on your mentor, who sounds just about perfect for the role. A good reminder for all of us more experienced sailors that we should be ready to help those starting out.
Thanks John, I couldn’t agree more about our mentor (who is also a special friend) – we feel extremely fortunate!!