Hello folks,
A little about myself. My wife and I are interested in getting into sailing. My wife sailed in college for a couple of years and together we have taken a few sailing
classes. We bought a house on the
water about 1.5 years ago and from day 1 we wanted to eventually buy a sailboat. The house came with a pier, and there is about 3 feet of
water under the end of the pier in low tide.
The trouble comes in a few hundred yards from our pier. There is a low bridge with a span that at its highest is only 14 feet above the water at high tide. Any time we would want to take a
boat out we would need to pass under this bridge and of course pass under it again to come back to the
dock. This basically invalidates the vast majority of production sailboats on the market.
I have thought a lot about this problem and for a large period of time considered that my only option would be to build my own sailboat from plans. This is probably feasible for me since I do woodworking for a hobby. I am still considering this but my main hesitation is that I want something that will be very durable. I am not going to
trailer this
boat. I am going to leave it in the water. I may keep it on a
lift or davit system, but it certainly will not be stored indoors.
Fiberglass and other plastic hulls are better at enduring this then
wood.
In order to get under the bridge I have basically settled on
buying or building a small
dinghy type boat that will use a gaff rig. That way the
mast can stay under the 14' span but still have more sail then say a sunfish. Any boat I buy will also need to have a
jib (the wife has made this a requirement)
Today while searching the
internet I found a production boat that actually meets these requirements, the Bauer 10
Bauer boats 10 sailing dinghy - BAUTECK MARINE INC.
I was pretty surprised to find out that all of this actually existed in a boat I could buy for almost the same cost as the
wood and
rigging to build something similar. This got me wondering if there were other boats out there that would fit the bill?
So all of that was the long way of asking, do you guys know of a boat that
1) can fit under a 14' bridge without unstepping the
mast
2) has a
jib
In a perfect world all of this would exist in something a bit sporty and that had room for a
motor mount as well since I need to navigate a creek before I reach the bay.
I have previously also considered tabernacles but after looking at a lot of videos, using a tabernacle on even something as modest as a 20 foot mast while underway twice every outing looks like more pain then I would like to live with.
Thank you for any help.