Newbie - What Should I Buy ?

[Pete7]

TC, good point which because I sail a mono and have a wife who dictates the angle of lean with screams if the rail touches the water, you forget about. It would be easy to see someone new to sailing a cat setting off down wind then later changing course and suddenly finding they have far too much sail up.

Pete

[James S]

I agree that sailing a dingy or the like is a good way to learn regardless of the type or size of your ultimate cruiser...just think 6 months is a lot...I guess it depends on how many hours a day you are actually sailing....I cant see being comfortable with the fundamentals taking more than 20 hours or so...I guess that depends wildly on the individual.

[webejammin]

I beleve that a good Hoby cat 16 can teach you not to have too much sail up and how to feather the sails in the breeze and not turn over too much. That is the best practice for even a 100 ft catamaran.

[jannpage]

First, I envy you a little. With a 250K boat budget you have a lot of choices, At worse, you might find your direction change after you get aboard. Long distant sailing is a bore to me. I have a great first mate but it turns out both she and I are much more party animals with our friends than we knew. So we have changed our travel plans a bit and end up being home more that we thought we would. We were able to do it without changing boats. Of course, we had had 4 previous "live aboard" vessels. Luckily, we were able to sell all 3 for almost what we paid for them - so we had the fun, used them and was able to recover a lot of our expense. Of course, all 3 were used boats when I bough them. But I also did not have your budget to work with. (Ex's got that) If you really enjoy your boats, you will not regret. Of course, there are people who do a lot more looking back than I do. I am pretty good at looking ahead.

Cheers.