New at Sailing

[bertoochy]

I will be taking sailing lessons with my wife soon and will be learning on a 23 foot sonar. I will be renting for a while to practice. when its time to buy a boat, what kind of cruiser sailboat boat can you recommend to me that is easy to cruise in and has plenty of room for friends.

[AbaftAndBaffled]

That's not much to go on! There's a lot of things to take into account. How long/far do you want to cruise? How much space does everyone want, and how much do they need? I mean, you could sleep thirty people on my boat if they're stacked head-to-toe like firewood.

Recommendations, make a list of things that you absolutely need out of the boat, as well as the things you want, then make some inquiries from there. You need to consider everything carefully. Figure out what size range you're looking at, how many people you want to get into it, what sort of features you want it to have, etc.

[Rakuflames]

Originally Posted by bertoochy

I will be taking sailing lessons with my wife soon and will be learning on a 23 foot sonar. I will be renting for a while to practice. when its time to buy a boat, what kind of cruiser sailboat boat can you recommend to me that is easy to cruise in and has plenty of room for friends.

Sail on as many different boats as you can. Pimp yourself out and offer to help sand and varnish, bring great food, etc. Ask each skipper what they like most and least about their boats. The best way to pick the right boat is to actively sail on as many as possible.

But be careful regarding other people's opinions. I have a good friend who was horrified that I bought a Hunter -- because he personally doesn't like swept-back spreaders. So I looked around for people who had swept-back spreaders. One said it just wasn't a problem. The second one has exactly the boat I have now -- and he won PHRF cruising boat of the year for west central Florida. No, boats like that can't run with the wind -- you can't get the boom all the way out -- but they sail very fast slightly off downwind, and the speed you get from that more than makes up for the zigzagging if you plan well -- which he did.

[Bash]

Welcome to the forum.

When it's time to buy a boat, the first thing you want to do is purchase the anchor. As anyone worth his salt on this forum will advise you, buy the biggest anchor you can afford. Now purchase chain to match, at least 100 meters of the stuff.

Now your task is simple: buy the largest boat you would feel safe sleeping upon while anchored in a gale on the anchor you've purchased. But don't buy too small a boat; the vessel must be large enough to make retrieval and stowage of the anchor practical. (This is the tricky part.)

Here's the cool part: don't worry about your friends. Once you have an anchor and a matching boat, friends (a.k.a. "crew") are easy to come by.

To recap, here are your new priorities in life:

1) ground tackle
2) a boat to match the ground tackle
3) friends (crew!) to service the boat

[ozskipper]

Charter and race a pile of other boats for a while. Get onto OPBs (other peoples boats) as race crew as often as possible to see what you like and dont like.

Even if racing isnt your thing, it hones your skills immensely plus it lets you see what other skippers do, gets you talking to other sailors about different types of boats and gets you into the sailing community very quickly.

What ever boat you buy, it wont be the right one. Within a year you will be dreaming about the next boat.

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, bertoochy.

[Waterway Guide]

Welcome aboard!