Solings in Storage

A nice image of a fleet of Boston Sailing Center Solings in winter storage.  Beautiful boats to sail.  Even sitting on jack stands in a cold boat yard with the masts down, they look fun.

http://bostonsailingcenter.com/

Our Aphrodite 101, Averisera, is a design based on the concept of the Soling.

Voyaging the House: Cost of Cruising Parts 3 and 4

A recent book by sailor Jackie Parry got me thinking about this parallel between house and boat, maintaining the people and the home.  Her book, Cruisers AA, really brings it all into focus.  She writes about all the little parts that go into a successful voyage.  Curiously, no one writes the same book about living in a house.

Jackie Parry has a couple of web sites relevant to voyaging sailors.

http://jackieparry.com/

http://www.noelandjackiesjourneys.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Cruisers-AA-Jackie-Sarah-Parry/dp/0987551507/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1450457510&sr=1-1&keywords=cruisers+aa

The old house West Medford (Boston area) in winter.  We could get guys to come over and install a fence, paint the house, mow the lawn, mulch the vegetable beds and trim the trees.  When it snowed, we were on our own with shovels.  Now, in Harwich, we have a snow blower and we now have to do everything else, too.

Part 3:  Maintain the Boat or House:  What a home costs is not just the outright price paid for the dwelling be it a house or a boat.  It includes the cost of keeping said dwelling in shape.  Many of the newer yachts designed or adapted for the voyaging circuit seem better set up for ease of maintenance.
Watching the newer homes being built on Cape Cod and other places to which we travel one can only wonder what the cost of ownership for the manse must be.  Homeowners are able to choose from a wide and competitive range of contractors.  Trade money for self sufficiency by hiring contractors?

Yacht owners have to do it themselves.  The impact of self sufficiency on voyagers makes the choice of yacht prove, "less is more."

Part 4:  Maintain the People:  Basically, entertainment is the big difference for voyagers versus house dwellers.  Voyaging is rich in experiences which have long entertainment value.  There is no room for "things" on board so the trip quickly becomes one of collecting "experiences."  Food, clothing, health care, and travel  pretty much vary within a narrow range wherever one is living or cruising.

Long on experiences and short on things keeps the voyaging life inexpensive.

Cross reference the Nov 10 2014 Wall Street Journal article cited earlier in this blog.

Voyaging the House: Cost of Cruising 2

Been studying the cost of cruising and comparing that to the cost of "housing."  Is cruising expensive?  Dunno.  Compared to what?  First, one has to compare the house to the boat.  Talk about an asymetric comparison?

A small boat is not the same as a small house.  Some things are easy to cross reference as being the same or very similar, food and entertainment, for example.  Look up the cost of a small house on the Cape and you'll find most are in the $300-400 thousand range.  Monthly expenses including mortgage, taxes, utilities, food, travel, entertainment, and maintenance are going to run in the $7-10 thousand per month range or $85 to 120 thousand per year...

A small house on Cape Cod that got pretty small last winter is pictured.  For the price of that house, one could buy a heck of a nice 50 footer.  For the cost of running the house: mortgage, taxes, utilities, food, travel, entertainment, and maintenance one could have a pretty plush cruise in the pretty plush yacht.

OK, this is a little ridiculous.  No head room and some other privations such as no running water or refrigeration, etc, etc.  But, it qualifies as small.  (And, boy, is she fun to sail.)  Let's say a typical 34 footer is going to not break the bank.  I read that sailors routinely purchase and fully refit yacht for under $100 thousand dollars and cruise for years at a monthly rate around $3-4 thousand a month or under fifty thousand bucks a year.  

Basically, every year of cruising is so much less expensive than living ashore one "buys back" the yacht in few years.  After that, the cruiser puts money in the bank each subsequent year... compared to living ashore.  If you aren't tethered to the doctor's office with a chronic ailment, cruising is a pretty nice way to partake of retirement or a sabbatical.  Obviously, if you have a day job, voyaging is out.

On one hand, why detail the advantages of cruising lifestyle.  That's just going to clutter up the harbors.  Let's face it:  life aboard is just not ever going to cut it for a vast majority of the population.  For the cruisers among us, it is a practical way to live compared to life ashore.

Voyaging the House: Thetis

The top image is of the family home, Thetis.  We lived aboard from 1961 through 1963 and made three ICW trips and sailed the Bahamas and South Florida.  The bottom image is the sloop I skippered and lived aboard in the Caribbean during the 2004-2005 sailing season.  The family home was way more comfortable.  The lower image was way more fun to sail.  Choices about the perfect boat all really hinge on purpose, same with houses ashore.

Voyage the house: reading lists

Been reading some books about cruising.  The type where the clueless couple buy a sailboat and go sailing.  There are not any books about clueless person buys house and lives in it.  I suppose there are some and I just haven't found them.  Corresponding with one of the writers, he said, "If you really want to go you make it happen."  I suppose that sums it all up house or boat.

Ya gotta wanna do it.  Re-lay stone walkway so it drains better, bed down vegetable beds with sea grass from Pleasant Bay, and chip up dead fall.  Voyage the house.

Voyage the House

Voyaging the House as if it is a sailboat... sort of...

Let's assume I was out cruising.  Upon reaching a port, launching the dinghy and going for a row would be a normal activity.  We don't cruise anywhere so we load the dinghy onto the back of my pickup truck and drive to a scenic place, launch and go for a row.  Missing from the cruising experience is the pleasure I derive from working on the boat.  Instead, we have the pleasure of working on the house.  Houses and their grounds are a lot of work made easier by the number of stores selling house maintenance goods.  Also, houses are more standardized in design and construction, building codes are helpful in that regard.  Boats require more ingenuity and imagination and, I believe, are much less work in the end.

Compare and Contrast

One of the interesting things about boat yards is "compare and contrast."  Here are two images of boats about the same size and design era, a Seafarer 34 designed by McCurdy and Rhodes in 1974 and my Aphrodite 101 designed by Elvstrom and Kjaerulf in 1977.  They were designed for similar purposes, racer/cruisers.  The design style of the Seafarer represents the shape of boats typically considered "good sea boats," and they are.  The Aphrodite is a bit more radical.  Its shape follows the design innovations of the US West Coast Cal 40 and later the Peterson 34.  The Aphrodite is a Danish design, modern even today.  The Seafarer is pure US East Coast.  The style is still favored in that area.  Go anywhere in the world and one will view the two types (and many others, as well) activly being sailed.

Geographic regions usually have a home/house design-style, or a few typical styles.  They seldom transplant well.  A California modern house is out of place on Cape Cod as is the reverse.  Boats, on the other hand, travel pretty well and are often transplanted.  That's their purpose.  At a boat yard one gets to see what many designers and owners consider the best interpretation of a suitable yacht.  Drive around an area and one doesn't see nearly the variety in home design.  And, once built, the home seldom moves.

Another thing about house vs boat.

Check out this blog.  The writer owned a Seafarer and writes about voyaging it.  Also writes about life aboard, house vs boat.  http://www.sailingchance.com/chance