I''ve tried to find a way to justify it, and I cant. I''ve tried to find a way to ratoinalize it, and I cant. I''m impractical, idiotic, and in many other ways, a romantic.
I REALY want a boat that looks like the old ships. With overhanging coach roofs, and windows in the stern, poop decks and big
wheels. A gaff rigged topsail schooner, with a huge bowsprit and 3 or 4 headsails.
Or maybe something diffrence. Maybe something like shamrock, with a huge gaff main, that bowsprit agian, but flush, teak decks, and once agian, those plethora of headsails and long bowsprit, low and sleek, but still from a distant time.
I dont know. I dig modern boats a little, but it''s hard for me to get excited over race sleds like my friends, and as much as I love the ease of maintenance on fiberglass, I still realized, and can hear and feel, that I''m sailing down the pacific in a bath tub.
Is it possible to create a modern boat, with a modern underbody, that points, and is seaworthy, and can sail in less than a force 5, and still retains some of that old beauty?
Has someone done it? Who?
and while I''m at it, I heard that in alot of boats a long bowsprit helps ballance out the sailplan. how does this work? I must admit, my joy at bowsprits is nothing more than a decade old memory of lying in the netting below the bowsprit of the Argus, after having dowsed the headsails, and coasting into Catalina''s twin harbors, but still, DAMN they''re cool, especialy with those nets underneath to lie (or be caught) in. I know they''re infinatley impractical, especialy at the docks, but I promise, I''ll keep her at a mooring and row out every morning! or on the hook, I swear (wont have a choice eh
)
ok, sorry, done with my dramatic plea for a past that doesnt exist any more, barring someone pointing me at a beutifull new/old boat, I''ll go back to coveting an infinatley practical Tartan 30. Not that anything that will be used to shove off from jobs and ties, and go sail off into the sunset can ever realy be THAT practical or mundane, but it''s just not the stuff that legends are made of. at least not mine.
*sigh*
-- James.
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