Wishlist

Even though buying a boat is years away I look at boats for sale all the time and think about what I want. Here’s my wishlist so far.

I hope to buy a boat somewhere on the east coast of North America, preferably in Canada in Nova Scotia or New Brunswick. My plan is to go to the Caribbean first to gain experience, I’ll go to sailing school before I set off anyway but I want to spend some time in a place with well known weather patterns, more than adequate forecasting, lots of anchorages and plenty of other sailors whose brains I can pick before I tackle open water sailing. Canada is a preference because I’ll likely have to spend at least a few months working on the boat before it’s ready to go and in Canada I could work legally so I’m not dipping into my savings too much. If the right boat for the right price is in Greece or Panama though I’ll be going to Greece or Panama.

I want a fiberglass boat made from the 60s to the 80s. I’ll be limited to one of those anyway by cost but older boats tend to be over built, they’re really strong and can take a beating. Wood is a definite no, they are really expensive to maintain and ferro cement is a definite no because finding someone who can work on them isn’t that easy. I would consider steel but fibreglass any idiot can do work on including me.

I want a boat between 27 and 32 feet long. Anything shorter than 27 is too cramped inside and will get tossed around in even moderate seas, anything bigger than 32 the cost of things starts going up. Bigger boats need heavier anchors, stronger chain, bigger sails, beefier winches, thicker ropes, etc… Bigger sails and heavier anchors are harder to manhandle alone as well.

I want a fin keel with skeg rudder or a modified full keel.

I would buy a full keel boat if I liked everything else about it but no way would I get a fin with spade rudder. They’re faster but you can knock the rudder off in the middle of nowhere and then what? Transom and skeg hung rudders are protected. My preference overall is for the modified full keel however since I’ll be on the small side for a sailboat and it’ll be more stable in heavy seas than a fin keel. I don’t mind the speed penalty, I’m not going to be in a hurry to go anywhere.

I want a sloop rig.

A sloop has only two sails, less things to mess around with, less things to go wrong. They say a ketch is best for single handed sailing because it keeps the size of the mainsail down but I just don’t like the look of them much lol, they don’t look balanced to me. Yawls you rarely see as cruisers, it’s more a fishing boat thing, the difference from a ketch is the aft mast is behind the rudder. I do like cutters though, especially if they have a long bowsprit. Sailboats look saltier with a long bowsprit lol, I would happily buy a cutter if it had a long bowsprit.

Those are all things integral to the boat, things I can’t change, now comes the options.

For power I hate the thought of an internal diesel engine. They stink, are finicky and require regular maintenance, they take up space, and lastly, I know nothing about them lol. I’d love a boat with an electric motor and batteries and a massive solar panel array but I’m not likely to find one and converting one doesn’t make sense for me. It’s very likely I’ll only have the boat a few years so spending all that money and making the boat harder to resell just doesn’t make sense. Some boats come with or are converted to use an outboard motor, I could live with that. I’m not a big fan of the motor hanging off the stern though, they’re ugly and they get in the way of self steering vanes. There’s another option though.

On some boats the transom overhangs the rudder enough to put the motor inside and in some cases there’s room enough it can even be made to tilt up. Even when it can’t you can make it so you can lift it out of the water and store it on its side in the locker. Both of the boats in the pictures had that custom done to them, that’s not outside my level of skill I don’t think. They both have self steering vanes and it isn’t in the way of either of them.

So my preference is for a boat that it would be possible to make this modification on but it isn’t a deal breaker. If the boat I buy has a working diesel with lots of life in it I’ll just learn about diesels and use that but if the engine is seized or already removed I won’t sweat it and do the conversion.

I want a self steering vane. No, I need one. No way can I cross oceans alone without one. Yes, there are electronic autopilots and I’ll have one of them too but they don’t work well in strong wind and waves and when they do they drain your battery in a hurry.

Self steering vanes are surprisingly simple devices and even more surprisingly expensive, I had a look at some the other day and they’re all around $4000. So it would be best to find a boat that already has one installed.

I’d like a boat already set up for single handed sailing. Usually the lines and winches for raising and reefing (taking some sail in so that strong winds don’t make the boat heel too hard) the mainsail are on the mast. This means you have to go up on deck to make any changes, much better to run all those lines to the top of the cabin so I can make changes from the cockpit always in reach of the tiller. That’s an easy modification I can do myself though. Also a furling headsail would be a plus, that means the small sail out front wraps around the forestay it hangs off of so that I don’t need to leave the cockpit to deal with that. Lazyjacks would be nice, basically guidelines that help your mainsail sit on the boom properly as you lower it. The less I have to get out of the cockpit the better.

A windlass would be nice but it isn’t a deal breaker. A windlass is the winch that pulls up your anchor. Most small boats the anchor is pulled by hand but I plan to get an oversized anchor so a windlass would definitely be a nice feature. Manual or electric is fine by me.

For electronics my list is pretty short, a gps, a radio with AIS and an electronic autopilot. AIS for those that don’t know is basically a signal system that tells boats who is where doing what. My system will probably be passive (they’re cheaper) meaning I won’t put out a signal but let’s say a cargo ship is bearing down on me in the middle of the night the AIS will pick up their signal and know their heading and speed and will warn me we are on a collision course. Radar is a luxury. Certainly useful but I can live without it. Same for a satellite phone. I should get an EPIRB though, add that to my list. It’s an emergency beacon that works anywhere on the planet to summon help. I could use my laptop or tablet as a chart plotter or I can do it old school on paper so I don’t need a chart plotter.

Definitely going to want a large battery bank and solar panels. I’d like refrigeration and having enough power to use an electric cooktop would be awesome. The less I have to go to shore for things like stove fuel the better. There’s a company called GoSun that makes solar ovens that I’ve seen a few people use on their boats. Definitely want one of those.

I’m not too concerned about the interior layout, boats in the size I’m looking at are all the same anyway. Usually two sea berths in the main cabin and a v berth up front with a small galley area and a toilet. I will only need one sea berth though (for sleeping while at sea, at anchor I’ll sleep in the v berth, v berth is too bouncy while under sail) so I’ll likely modify the interior and turn one berth into a permanent chart table area and a shower. Yes, I want a shower. If I could carry enough water to use it I’d put in a bath tub.

Definitely going to rig up a water catchment system for collecting rainwater and I have an idea for a solar water distiller as well. Anything to reduce trips to shore.

Those are the main things I look at when looking at a boat, which of the features I want does it have? There are lots of choices in my price range so I shouldn’t have any trouble finding one to my liking.

I won’t buy anything without getting it professionally inspected first. That will cost about $500-700 for the size of boat I’m looking for but if it saves me buying a lemon it’ll be worth every penny.

It’s fun to dream, even if it never comes true. I didn’t think I’d ever go to Japan and I made that one happen so who knows?