Voyaging the House- How Big is the Boat?

Happened upon a classic cruising design hauled out at Stage Harbor Marine for the winter.  It is a good example of a heavy displacement cruiser.  It is a good example of the size-of-boat discussion.  How does boat size get measured or presented?  Obviously, all 33 footers aren't the same so how do we describe the difference?

Also have pictures of similar length boats.  The point is, length over all (LOA) is not a very complete picture of a yacht's size.  Displacement is a better measure.  Length on the waterline (LWL) is another good metric since it is a rough indication of the amount of floor space available inside.  LWL is also a measure of speed potential over the long haul.  Boats with similar waterline lengths arrive at similar times when making passages.

Three views of boats showing the role of displacement in yacht "size."  Note beam and underwater volume.  The "shorter" 32 footer has more boat in the water than the longer 33 and 34 footers that follow in pictures.  The 32 is actually, a bigger boat in many regards.

Southern Cross 32

LOA 32.3, LWL 25.4, Disp 11400 lbs, SA 524 sq ft

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=6029

Aphrodite 101

LOA 32.6, LWL 26.2, Disp 6200 lbs, SA 436 sq ft

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=946

Peterson 34

LOA 33.9, LWL 28.3, Disp 10800 lbs, SA 565 sq ft

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=2005

A Southern Cross 32 is a canoe stern yacht design with a purposely small cockpit for the small crew most likely to voyage the yacht.  The Peterson 34 has much more deck space and cockpit space to accommodate a large racing crew.  An Aphrodite falls somewhere in the middle being small, a full size crew is just crowded and uncomfortable.  As a double handed sailor, the Aphrodite is very comfortable.  Being a light boat, there is little room below for more than two persons at a time.

Retire and Go Sailing-Lifestyle Objective

What is the objective?  Gardening?  Birdwatching?  Entertaining?  Golf?  Obvious questions with obvious answers.  Boats and voyaging offer access to various objectives.  Voyagers visit gardens around the world but don't garden per se.  And so on...

Big boat or little boat?
Marina or Anchor

Big house or little house?
Beachfront or Remote

Total Cost of ownership.  Time and money required to maintain ownership.  It is always about time and money.

Well regarded sailing and voyaging writer, Fatty Goodlander observes that it costs about $2K a month to operate a yacht on a world cruise.  (Fatty is frugal but not a skin flint.)  He points out that you can do it for $1,800/month and the cost is maintenance of the yacht.  The implication is that the savings in cash is less than the loss of value.  Houses and boats, same business model.

The things we feel are "required" govern how much we spend and how/where we go.  Motor yachts and waterfront homes are beautiful and comfortable.  They come with different limitations from the limitations of the remote anchorages and small boats.  It is all just a choice.  What is the retirement objective?

Marina in Coinjock is popular with some.  A must visit stop on the ICW trip.  Not too far away is a quiet anchorage.  You will miss the festive crowd, showers, prime rib dinner and travelling circus.

New Bern waterfront house.  Perfect for house parties and kids, grandkids and all their friends.  Fun stuff not to be trivialized.  I love the lawn of yellow flowers.  Gardens plus birdwatching?

Scene of a quiet anchorage along the ICW in North Carolina. Birdwatching?

A Peterson 34 I just happen to like.  Simple to sail and own.  Long legs.

Voyaging the House-Stormy Weather

It blew like stink for a few days and I never once had to get up and check the dock lines or anchors.

Breakwater at Sesuit Harbor on the north shore of Cape Cod in the Town of Dennis.

Back in the Rumor days, we entered St Martin's Simpson Bay Lagoon and motored over to an anchorage between Grand Islet and Witches' Tit.  It was going to blow and I wanted as quiet a place as possible.  We set two anchors much to the complaining of my crew.  That night it blew and boats all around us dragged.  My crew, young son Andrew, said, "Good move dad with two anchors."

Today, the after-storm work is to pick up some deadfall around the property and go back to work on the house.  

Voyaging the House-Boats and Costs

This web site has a good summary of the cost of preparing to cruise and cruising.  The yacht Sundowner is a Westsail 32, 19,000 lbs displacement.  By comparison, the Aphrodite 101, also 32 feet long, is 7,000 lbs displacement.

This site is well organized.  http://sundownersailsagain.com/costs/  Sail on Sundowner!

Inspires one to wonder just how to accomplish a voyage aboard a much smaller boat.  All of the earliest voyaging yachts were pretty small.  Captain and Mrs Crapo sailed TransAtlantic on a 20 foot whaleboat, "Centennial" Johnson on a 20 foot dory, and then the Rob Roy story of a 20 foot yawl.  Tillicum, a log canoe sailed by the Venturesome Captain Voss went around the world in a 38 footer that was pretty narrow.  Slocum's Spray was 38 feet.

In the modern era we have small boats sailed by Lin and Larry Pardy, Patrick Ellam and Colin Mudie, Shane Acton, Chay Blythe, and John Guzzwell, to name only a few.

Interesting voyages are made on small boats.

Averisera, idle on Cape Cod

Retire and Go Sailing-Static vs Dynamic

In a house, one is static.  Life moves past one in the form of visitors and seasons.  Travel, of course, is dynamic.  It is secondary to the static life at home.

On a voyaging yacht, life is dynamic.  One moves dynamically from place to place viewing the place as a static event.  Stay long enough in one harbor and the situation changes to mimic housing.

Retire and Go Sailing-Cross Training

Live ashore and cross train?  Sounds like something that happens at the gym.  Live aboard and cross train.  Sounds like learning to do one another's jobs.  When voyaging, redundancy is critical and that means we cross train to be able to replace one another.

When we sail at night, often during deliveries to and from distance double handed races, one of us is asleep below and the other on deck working the yacht.  There are "below" jobs and "on deck" jobs.  When the occur is not just a function of who is best at the job.  It is more a function of who is available.

Voyage the Yacht-The Galley

The perfect boat discussion usually is centered around sail area to displacement ratios and designer/builder characteristics.  How about the galley and provisions stowage?  Very important stuff, food.  No food, no cruise.

Along the same lines as the cost of cruising, cooking during a cruise is going to be similar to the way you do it at home.  There are two big differences:  dry storage space (cabinets and shelving) and cold storage (refrigerators and freezers).  The smallest apartment or house has more stowage than almost any cruising yacht a couple can easily handle.

The resource:  http://theboatgalley.com/pressure-cookers/  Pressure cookers are the best.  Lots of great tips.  The author of this blog covers the subject well.

Reducing the galley discussion to simple terms:  

The drawers and cabinets must hold the utensils and cookware you use and the foods you cook.  

Fundamentals:
Pots and pans must fit on the stove burners when the yacht is sailing, heeling.  I prefer saute pans and pots without long handles.  A small stove top pressure cooker is almost essential.  However, if the pots are hard to stow and don't fit the stove, they are useless.

You know how you cook.  Now, you can start looking for the most suitable galley propelled by the appropriate sail area to displacement ratio.

Here are some views of two similar plain vanilla 38 footers of about 16,000 pounds displacement.  The galley is small with little workable counter space unless the navigation table is called into action.    I had a similar setup on the C&C 38 Mk 3 I skippered for years.  Using the navigation station as a surface is practical in port, count on it.

 Space behind the settee cushions may be suitable for some galley equipment.  The first thing to notice is that the storage space is going to need some sort of "lee cloth" to keep items from falling out.  this is a typical retrofit.  The PFDs demonstrate the amount of space available.

When you start voyaging your house, little things make the biggest differences.  House or boat, same, same.  Ashore, we can nip off to the nearest big box store for another set of shelf systems and set it up in the basement.  The rule of available space:  Parkinson's Law.