Quote:
Originally Posted by Lotta
Thank you everbody for the advices.
I am keeping on looking. The Amigo 23 is just little too small. I need something about 25 - 27 feet long. Maybe the Amigo 27 but then it is costing much more. But I did read of a Swedish girl who lived on a Havsfidra all year in the arctic. I will see how much moneys I have in the spring.
Thank you everybody for the help
Lotta
|
Considering the journey can start whenever/where ever a cruiser wants--you could look for boats that are not local for you but are in good jumping off spots for cruisers. While I don't advocate that you fly halfway around the world to get your boat, if you find a good boat in such a location (that you've had a reputable surveyor check out for you), then go for it. We're from the east coast of the US (Washington, DC) and fancied cruising the Atlantic but found our cruising boat in California and have relocated to CA to do major rebuild on the boat before taking off for our own cruising--starting in the Pacific. For us, the journey of going with the flow has already started
At a marina on Baja, Mexico, I recently met a couple from Florida who purchased a 45' boat (can't recall the make, sorry) in Long Beach, CA. They'd had their boat a total of a month and were sailing it around the world--as it turns out, from California instead of Florida! They, like us, just couldn't find anything closer that fit their specific needs and desires.
There are many stories of all the cruisers who make it from the US mainland to HI and then sell their boats in HI because they were totally freaked out by the whole Pacific cruising experience.
While it is true that you are more likely to find buying and outfitting a boat "cheap" close to home, keep your options open.
Regarding a great inexpensive little boat for bluewater cruising, there were a couple hundred Rawson 30's made in the Pacific Northwest (US). This is a full keel Bill Garden design made from around 1960-1980 of solid fiberglass. If you google Rawson 30, you'll find a yahoo group of owners and a few other websites with them as well as some for sale on Yachtworld. From $6-15 thousand US, they can be purchased (usually on the west coast of US) in fixer-upper status that is structurally sound but would likely require you to put on autopilot and nav equipment as well as more water capacity, additional batteries and other things cruiser usually want. If you find one already "cruise ready" it will usually be between $25-35 thousand US. You would be unlikely to find one anywhere except the US though.
While we're rebuilding our chosen cruising boat (a 54' schooner), we sail on a 1966 Rawson 30 sloop that we purchased in CA for $6,400. We bought it just for knocking about Southern California and Baja Mexico while working on the larger boat project. This little boat is a great example of a boat that one could buy cheaply and fix up a bit and sail 'round the world safely. Out of the 260 or so built, a handful have circumnavigated and documented it. Its clear that whoever owned our Rawson cruised, probably in the late 1980's at the latest because of the vintage of GPS, Autopilot, etc.
On an inexpensive boat, there will always be things that have to be "fixed" on for safety or comfort. On our boat, when we bought it last year we did a number of things. For our coastal cruising comfort and to fix things the surveyor found to be needed, we added battery capacity, small solar panel, additional water tanks, additional fuel filter and raw water filters for the engine, and new lexan in two fixed portlights. Replaced some improper hoses, re-did the cockpit drain hoses, added a siphon break to the exhaust riser, had the propane tanks tested and installed new fittings on them. I think the total cost of all that we did was around $1,200. We've had the boat a year and expect to sail it for another 6-8 months before the larger boat is relaunched and we sell this one. We keep replacing things and you'll find that you will keep replacing things on an older boat, so have it in your budget. For example, we recently replaced the wire/rope main halyard ($150). There are also lots of little things you'll buy if you're on a "simple boat", for example, we have a solar shower ($60) for taking showers on deck.
If we were going to take off around the world cruising on this Rawson, there's other stuff we'd do. For example, it has good jib and storm sail as well as a so-so spinnaker (sans pole, though) but its genoa is pretty much shot so it would require at least one new headsail(s). We'd look for a good condition used genoa that could be purchased for $300-$600. It has an old autopilot that we've never hooked up and we'd have to see if it works or buy a new one. I suspect we'd buy a new autopilot and keep this one as backup. We'd use a GPS on the laptop and have the boat GPS as backup. The sloop rigged jib is on a furler on the forestay on an 18" bowsprit and we'd probably make a modification so that the jibstay is NOT the forestay by adding a forestay back at the stem--this to give us cutter rig option and to make sure we can more easily inspect the forestay. We'd add more ground tackle and we'd be likely to re-bed all the lovely bronze portlights. We'd replace the thu-hull valve that is permanently closed (looks like this boat cruised in one of those locations that didn't allow such a valve between the toilet and the holding tank, thus the bronze valve body was (argh!) permanently secured/bent into the closed position. On the side of cosmetics and ease of use, we'd be likely remove the carpeting and repaint the plywood sole to be kept bare. We'd make a couple repairs to the wooden caprail, revarnish the companionway hatch. The mast and boom need repainting, but we'd take off with them as is and do the painting somewhere along the way, not now. Probably all the stuff we'd do to get it safe/comfortable cruise-ready would take additional $1500-$2000 US. This all assumes that we do all the work ourselves.
So, we've got less than $8K in in now and would likely have less than $11K in it once it were ready to go. We'd expect to have a $3K reserve of money for "things that break or wear out" and the spare parts that we'd buy to take along for the standing and running rigging as well as the engine and misc would probably take another $3K to make us happy.
We already own the tools needed, but if buying them, you'd have to add another $1-$2K. The charts and books that you'd want to have...well...that can add up too.
So, that looks like one would have $11K in boat, $6K in spares and emergency money, $1.5K for tools, and who knows what for charts and provisioning. So, someone with $20-$22K US could cruise fully provisioned as I've just described it on this particular boat.
I'm sure there are many, many similar cruise-worthy boats out there "on the cheap" and I wish you luck in finding one! If you do buy a fixer upper, you'll become very familiar with the boat while fixing it up.
__________________
Linear Mode
