SailNet is a forum community dedicated to Sailing enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about sailing, modifications, classifieds, troubleshooting, repairs, reviews, maintenance, and more!
Look into one of the 45-50 ft used boats from a chart fleet and re-fit to suit your needs. Your budget is well within that grasp and you end up with what you want in a <10 y.o. boat!!!
Welcome to Sailnet. Unless you have significant undisclosed experience, you'd probably be better served buying a small, higher performing boat while you developed boat handling and sail trim skills. If you have a smaller boats you will probably to sail it more frequently. Further smaller boats give immediate feedback that you wouldn't get on a bigger boat. Ask yourself, "Would I rather learn to drive with a Mini-Cooper or a Greyhound bus?"
Perhaps you can find a local venue with one-design racing. If so, you'll likely find a built community committed to support you while you develop. Additionally, the market value of most one-design boats is well established, which will make it easy to sell your boat when you want to move up.
While you're developing skills you should seek opportunities to sail on other people's boats. An easy way to achieve this is crewing on races. There are good posts up on how to get invited to crew, and the expectations of beginning crew.
Also during this period you can explore chartering to taste sailing on big boats and cruising.
As so often happens, when someone names a couple of designs that interest them they are often diametrically opposed in design concept. The Hunter 356 and the Bayfield 32 are such a pair.
The Bayfield probably wasn't produced after the early/mid 80s and the Hunter is a 2000 era boat, very different on many many fronts.
You have a decent budget and should be able to find a reasonably good boat for what you have in mind. But these two on your 'short list' means you have a lot more research to do. Specifying offshore duty narrows the field, though that does depend on exactly what you mean by offshore.
Any boat you find will likely need some upgrades and tweaks before heading over the horizon so keeping that in mind, you'll need some cash left over after purchase. So lets say that leaves you with $120K to shop with.. max.
A YW search with VERY broad parameters turned up nearly 5000 boats between 32 and 40 feet... enjoy:
I'm currently a member of a club which allows me to sail many different kinds of boats, (owned by other members, and with their permission of course). I do have practise with smaller boats and larger boats, my skillset is not really a factor in what boat I choose, as that can be easily trained up.
Thank you Faster for your advice. Yes, I do have much much more research to do about these boats, however I do understand (correct me if I'm wrong) that both these boats are fibreglass sloops. I do not really see the large difference between these two boats, so if you would kindly clear things up for me. That'll be great
The Westsail 32 and Melges 32 are both fiberglass sloops, too -- same length, tiller steering, bowsprits ... rather different sailboats for all that.
Rather different missions.
You have a budget -- good. What kind of sailing do you intend, and on what sailing grounds? Offshore is different than coastal. Bahamas is different than the Pacific. Motoring down the ICW is different from 4000 mile tradewinds passages, which is different from tearing around the buoys in San Diego Bay. How many people aboard, for how long, and what are their expectations of comfort, privacy, modern conveniences, and adventure? Will there be several qualified hands aboard or just you?
Where will the boat be stored? Are you comfortable working with fiberglass, wood, canvas, diesel engines, DC electrical systems?
By all means, goggle at as many different boats as possible, until a particular type (or specific model!) catches your eye. But until you can honestly answer the questions above (and more), you've basically got a boat-shaped dream without enough parameters to flesh it out & give it a name. WHO is gonna do WHAT with the boat, and WHERE?
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
SailNet Community
1.7M posts
173.8K members
Since 1990
A forum community dedicated to Sailing, boating, cruising, racing & chartering. Come join the discussion about sailing, destinations, maintenance, repairs, navigation, electronics, classifieds and more