Hi all,
As I continue to dig around looking for details on boats and cruising and safety etc etc., I have asked a fair number of people I know as well as some industry types what counts as an ideal cruising boat. I have even started reading 'The cruising multihull' by Chris White.
Now interestingly, I asked a professional builder their thoughts and they came back with the following...
"If you’re planning on real cruising, 48 is really the minimum for load carrying, safety, and sailing. Load up a smaller boat and it will simply not sail"
and
"Chris White’s book is horribly dated, and gives some very off input on that threshold. If you go for a cat much under 48’ you will be very disappointed with its sailing character."
The 'threshold' here in the second quote refers to me mentioning that the CW book mentions that above 37 feet there wasn't statistical data to justify needing bigger for a 'safe' blue water cruiser ie: no boats larger than 37 feet had sunk/wrecked/had people die.
They further mentioned, contrary to what I have heard around here that 'singlehanding a 48 foot is no problem'. Not only that, they mentioned that their daughter could singlehand the families 62 and that 'sail handling is no problem'!
This is vastly different information than I have seen here that at 48 feet on a catamaran people have not felt their wife could singlehand should they become incapacitated. They did mention that electric
winches are mandatory at these sizes but also that "electric
winches are bomb proof and we have not seen a single issue with them over a million miles of sailing" and that "stick with
lewmar" was the best course of action.
So, from what I read here 40 foot cats are as big as can be single handed yet from a builder/racer I am hearing 48 no problem on up to 62! Why this discrepancy? I have a hunch here that is ultra conservatism at the forum but am curious if something is missing. I do see a fair amount of conservative advice which is good but is it being too conservative?
Thoughts, comments?
just a quick edit - I think what this guy was trying to say was that for him real cruising means having some speed at your disposal and not being on a overloaded boat which would not feel like it sailed well. Also, I gather that in order to have a boat large enough to accomdate sufficient supplies for long range cruising and maintaining safety bigger is better.