Small one man sailboat

[astokel]

Has anyone mentioned Nordica 20 yet?



It was made in Canada and called a Halman also. Very seaworthy, good size cabin for a twenty-footer and sells for less than $5K used.

[UNCIVILIZED]

Out of curiosity, why the heck are you writing a book on a subject that you know next to nothing about? Seems like that would be a pretty bumpy path to choose. And it could definitely impact it's reviews & sales.

In order to learn more about sailing, there are plenty of classes you can take. Many of them gratis, or close to it. And you could even get educated enough to rent/charter boats, or buy your own, so that you'd have a much better feeling for what the sailing life is like. What it does to your head & your heart. The people you meet, the places, the challenges, etc.

When you're trying to pick out the boat, once you've narrowed it down to a few, Google them all, & pick the one that gets the most hits. As that'll be the one with the most name recognition for your readers. Though you could also post a survey in several places, including here, once you have it narrowed down to 5 boats or so.

Most boats by Pacific Seacraft have pretty good name recognition, & are quality boats. But there are dozens out there. Anywhere from 20' to 20m, as even the latter are often single-handed. As in Open 60's such as the boat's in the Vendee Globe Race which is currently going on.

Here's a resource for you Atom Voyages - Home
Atom Voyages - Good Old Boats List

[hamburking]

A "one person boat" can be any size. Boat choice is mostly what you can afford. If you are looking for a "cheap" boat, then it will be small and old.

The location is also important. Here on Lake Ontario, we have lots of canadian made boats, like C&C, CS, Mirage, Whitby, Nonsuch, Tanzer, etc. But you would find completely different boats in europe, australia, or the caribbean.

Also, each boat has a look and feel. Somthing with a steel hull gives a very different impression than, say, a wood hull.

Since the boat is going to be a major character in your book, you need to give us a little more info on the attributes of the character, where she is from, where she is going, how much money she has, etc, then we could give you some good suggestions.

For example, if she were inexperienced, she might get a fin keeled lightweight racer for sailing offshore...or she might get a full keeled ferro hull and run out of food and water on a passage. Wow...this stuff practically writes itself.

[Mithril Bham]

Read Chichester. Not small but good stuff.

[oleman]

Prior to fancy electronics, synthetic materials, world maps on electronic devices there was Joshua Slocum and his 35' boat the SPRAY.
He has credit of being the first Human to sail alone around the World on his own, he didn't even have a modern sextant for the time. He wasn't female and he wasn't young.
He did the circumnavigation without any financial backing on a boat he designed and built from salvage.
A true sailors, sailor.

Clearing for home – In the calm belt – A sea covered with sargasso – The jibstay parts in a gale – Welcomed by a tornado off Fire Island – A change of plan – Arrival at Newport – End of a cruise of over forty-six thousand miles – The Spray again at Fairhaven

[Adrian NAMT]

A couple of thoughts:
Clare Francis - herself a fiction writer - see "Night Sky" and an accomplished, well known single hander - see her voyages in "Come Hell or High Water" and "Come Wind or Weather".
Or,
How about choosing a special and unique boat that has a great story behind its design and builder, but relatively unknown to sailors (who will be your worst critics) - the Aleutka 25. See Ferenc Mate's assessment of this intriguing, minimalist, single-hander in Chapter 5 of "Best Boats to Build or Buy"

[Ida_Lewis]

Teknishn, what are your titles -- I'm interested! I'll bet you're a Lindsay Davis fan too -- Marcus Didius Falco mysteries. Highly recommend, set in Roman Empire.

[wsstrange]

FlickaDana

[Chuck Hawley]

I think you can go several ways.
1. Small, relatively expensive cruiser that just reeks "cruising sailboat" like the Flicka. Slow, cute, seaworthy.

2. Small, very inexpensive production about about 25-35 years old. Lots of boats in the 24-27' range could be pressed into long ocean voyages, and the sailor could experience some of the shortfalls of doing the voyage on a shoestring.

3. Small, moderately expensive race boats that are uncomfortable, but much faster than option 1 or 2 and which are surprisingly seaworthy. Examples would include the Wilderness 21, Moore 24, Santa Cruz 27, or Olson 30. All available for $7 to $15K, and all have made impressive voyages.

As for chores, I'd recommend the following:

1. Celestial Navigation takes a pretty big chunk out of each day.
2. Sail repair for chafe and accidents, especially spinnakers.
3. Engine or generator repair: always failing.
4. Systems repair: water, electrical, sanitation, rigging.

Chuck Hawley

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Boatwriter23

Hi everyone,



I'm working on a short story where the narrator operates a small sailboat by herself and travels over long distances in it. I'm trying to find out what sailboat model to research. It needs to have a cabin because she often sleeps on open water.



Also, what are some basic day to day things that you do to maintain a sailboat?



I really appreciate your help.

Is this an experienced protagonist?
Is this is this somebody with significant amounts of money, moderate amounts of money, or very little money?
Age?
How tall?
What locale?
Duration of trip?
Any guests expected?
Intentional trip or unexpected/ad hoc?

Assuming average height, little money, coastal trip and a fair bit of experience the following boats would work. I included them because there were a lot of each made so widely available, small so they would be cheap to buy, maintain and operate and older which also contributes to cheap.

http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=200
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=407
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=76
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=446
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=263
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=261
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=301
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=136
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=113
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=223
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=310
http://sailboatdata.com/viewrecord.asp?class_id=3205

With a small sailboat you are going to be using an outboard. With 12gal fuel you are going to have 120-180milrs max range. Motor slower to get the better range. More than 12gal starts to be hard to store on a small boat. Add a 5gal emergency jug at most.

Being on a budget you are not going to have a watermaker. For coastal & ICW trips a watermaker is way down on the list of stuff to spend money on and is really unlikely to have come with the boat. Boat probably has a small water tank of 5-15gal. Will need 2 or 3 5gal jugs for water. In US can usually find municipal water to to refill for free every week or so.

Going offshore, i.e. a passage longer than 3 days or so anything with a centerboard starts to be inappropriate so some of the boats would need to be crossed off the list

Dailey routine ICW:

Wake up and check what's going on around and on the boat.
Constitutional & breakfast
Haul anchor and get underway.
Running the ICW you are looking 2 days or so ahead for anchorages and provisions/fuel/water so sometime during the day, every day, you check maps and pilots and look ahead. You don't want to make a provision stop and find you can't make the next anchorage before dark. Then you have to back track to an anchorage you can make or pay moorage at the town.

Anchorages on the ICW tend to be about 40mi or so apart. In a small sailboat you want to motor at 3.5-4.5 mph. Any faster seriously cuts into your fuel economy, like 8mpg instead of 12 or 15mpg. Basically you will motor about 10hr every day.

About 20-25% of the time the water is big enough to sail without special concern. Sometime the wind will becoming from a direction that allows you to sail along the narrow channels that comprise a lot of the ICW.


Check oil daily in the outboard if 4-stroke or make sure to add it to fuel if outboard is 2-stroke. Clean or replace spark plugs every several days if 2-stroke.

A cheap autopilot would be highly desireable. Without it the protagonist has to hand steer 10-12hr per day. Plus stop to use head or make food. Cheap autopilot for a boat that small is $500 or so new.

Running the ICW is not very fun in the dark but doable with GPS. Anchoring after dark is a bigger problem, you really want to see what is in the anchorage: docks, other vessels, rocks, stumps, shoals, poor protection in the direction a storm is likely to blow from. If I knew next anchorage was too far to make during daylight hours I would up anchor well before dawn in order to have some light when setting anchor at next anchorage.

Changes in noises on the boat usually mean something has changed; the weather, wind direction, loose screw or cotter pin. Always investigate.

Underway you are checking out side every 3-7min, especially with an autopilot.


Daily routine New England and Pacific Northwest:

Similar but more sailing and less motoring. Also spacing of anchorages tends to be closer but also more variable. Water is a lot more open.

Provisioning towns are a lot more variable.


West Coast:

Sailing down the west coast is a different beast. There will be chunks you have to sail 2-4 days straight. There aren't a lot of anchorages so you wind up paying for berths in most places you stop.

Since most of the travel is now sailing (you don't have the fuel capacity for motoring that much) and the water is open you can steer the boat with sheet to tiller methods. Many involve little or no money. Trying to use the cheap autopilot for long distance sailing will wear them out quickly, you want to reserve them for very light wind sailing when sheet to tiller is marginally effective and motoring.

A real windvane steering gear would be nice but they start at $1500 new for the very light ones suitable for a small boat and the older ones you can find cheap are a lot heavier which is especially bad on a small boat.

On passage protagonist will need to wake up hourly to check on things thru the night or take crew or risk things going bad while asleep. Things that can go bad:
Sail rips, sheet chafes.
Screw or cotter pin comes loose.
Wind changes direction and boat sails toward shore
Squal
Weather changes
Encounters another vessel or an oil rig in certain areas.
. . .


Routine in Caribbean:
Similar to West Coast but passages are shorter 1-3days, and in a lot of places you can anchorage hop with no overnight passages.
Water tends to be a lot shallower at the north end of the Caribbean and that needs to be constantly considered.
Water tends to cost a fair bit unless you take small amounts at a time and are unobtrusive about it.

Routine everywhere:
What's going on with the boat is always something you are checking on. If the boat gets hurt you are impaired. Prevention is always better than cure.

Constantly check for traffic, where am I, are there land or seabed features I need to worry about, what's the weather and what will it be, constant small repairs.

If you want you can download a chart reader for free and free marine charts for the US, New Zealand and a few other places and actually map out a real route. Let me know and I'll send you the links.

Daily ablutions. Water will be at a premium. Most people take sponge baths regularly. Some will swim in the salt water and rinse with fresh after. Most try to keep bathwater use to about 1liyer per day unless they have a watermaker, large water tankage or regular supply of fresh which depends on the cruising locale.
There are a couple alternatives for toilette. Built in head with holding tank, porta-potti, bucket.

Last thing. Dinghy. Ya gotta have a dinghy to get ashore, there's no beaching the mothership except those with centerboards and even that's not such a good idea.
There's 3 options:

A. very small inflatable (7-8') (picking mine up today coincindentally). Stores below deflated. Takes 15-25min to inflate and deflate. Susceptible to puncture and UV damage from sun. If the mother ship uses an outboard that is in the 4-7hp range it can be used on the dinghy too. A 4hp could probably be moved by a small woman. With a little rigging the boom can be used to lift a larger motormotor back and forth but more time is involved. Bigger than 7hp or so will overload the stern of the dinghy and possibly overpower it too. Won't row well except in very low wind and current. Expensive ($900 new). Used would be cheaper but might done be as small as you want or have storage space for. Towing only possible in very calm conditions and has a significant impact on fuel economy.

B. very small (6') homemade pram. Rows much better. Motors well with a smaller engine. Storage issues. Has to sit upside down on foredeck right in front of mast. Makes anchoring and working with sails difficult. Towing the dinghy is possible on big chunks of the ICW and smaller parts of NE & PNW. Moderate impact in fuel economy.

C. Very small (6') homemade folding dinghy. Rows almost as well as pram. Not as durable but better than inflatable by a long shot. Motor needs to be small, 4hp or less. Folds up enough to store below depending on how cabin arranged. May be possible to store flat against the life line.

See this https://www.uscgboating.org/images/420.PDF for USCG boating requirements. In the middle there's a list of required equipment.

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by treefarmer

Check out a book entitled 'Tinkerbell'. It's a story about a fellow who built a 13' boat in the 50's, I think, and sailed across the Atlantic.

Robert Manry, 1965.

[alctel]

Voyages of Storm Petrel as well. Single-handing lady from the UK to Africa

[Juho]

Originally Posted by Boatwriter23

Hi everyone,

I'm working on a short story where the narrator operates a small sailboat by herself and travels over long distances in it. I'm trying to find out what sailboat model to research. It needs to have a cabin because she often sleeps on open water.

Also, what are some basic day to day things that you do to maintain a sailboat?

I really appreciate your help.

Albin Vega was already mentioned. Google "cruising lealea".

I think boats do not require much maintenance when under way. Maybe more before you leave and after you return, and once a year something bigger.

Atlantic Ocean has been crossed also with an H-Boat (quite light, but quite seaworthy too).

[oleman]

IMO
You do not have to have experience or any real knowledge of the subject matter in order to write a successful novel.

The author of MOBY DICK didn't have any experience on ships. He took othe job on the ship just to add some credibility to his book.

Margaret Mead [GONE WITH THE WIND Didn't know anything to speak of of the Old South around the Civil War yet she penned one of the most sucessful stories ever.
Look at all the air-heads in Hollywood who have written sucessful books, multiple examples where knowledge is of no importance.

OK much of this stuff is written by ghost writers, many of which also have no subget matter knowledge either.

SO pick your prospective audience, make it entertaing and become a successful author!!
I recommend you spend your time learning to entertain your selected audience and not worry about technical details of the subject matter.
Unless you are attempting to write a technical manual on small boat operations in open ocean. That would bore many people out of their minds and probably never be popularly sucessful.

[Scout 30]

I love the BC Cutter but it's not really a small boat when you consider what it displaces. I think it's little sister, the Falmouth Cutter would be more suitable & certainly capable. However, if your writing a romantic novel about cruising it has to done in an old wooden boat, preferably 100 +/- years old. There's nothing romantic about polyester resin & fiberglass. Wooden boats have souls & old wooden boats have stories to tell.