Briefly, and with all due respect to all involved in this discussion, this gets back to my earlier point that a discussion like this tells more about the individuals offering advice (myself included) than it does about what Laura and her family needs to go cruising. Discussions of "what is the right boat for me?" is a frequent topic of conversation on sailing forums. And of course there is no one universally right, one-size fits all, answer to this.
What Laura has done to help focus, and add realism, to this discourse is to begin to define what her family's needs are. She has said that she is read about other people who have gone 'minimal' and at least in principle that seems to be an acceptable trade off if it means that her family can go cruising on a minimal budget.
Whether this is realistic or not depends on Laura's family and what they really are willing to live without. We who don't know Laura's family can't answer that question precisely and with all due respect to Laura and her family, they may not be able to answer accurately until they actually get out and give it a try. I'm not sure it's all that tragic if they did get it wrong.
After all, the process of learning about a venture like this provides a common goal, and shared set of activities for their family of a type that teaches a range of lessons, can build physical fitness, exposes them to some of the beauty of the world, paradoxically build self reliance and teamwork, and depending on their personalities is a pursuit that is likely to build a stronger bond (if it does not shatter their relationship altogether).
If it does not work out, and if they decide that a Spartan cruising life is not for them, and if they sell or give away the boat and if they then move on with their life, they still have the memories and lessons. That's not too bad. If they don't get hurt or bitter, they have lived an interesting period in their lives, and a life worth living is often stitched together with a series of small interesting periods, even when some of them ended differently than hoped or planned. In my mind, there is no tragedy to that.
I have told these stories here in more detail at various times but I think that these are relevant to this thread so I'll pass along the short versions. When I was restoring my Folkboat in Dinner Key, back in the early 1970's, I was friends with a number of the folks who anchored out in the 'Pirates'. Amongst the mix of swells, stoners, rummies, hermits, voyagers, panhandlers, hangers on and the normal folk, there were cruisers who came and went, each with their own stories. And while many fit a certain mold, a guy and a gal, legally joined or not, cruising a rugged old cruising boat, it was the exceptions, which perhaps apply to the point that I eventually hope to make.
Folkboat, Dinner Key 1973
Me,(on left) and Dad (on the right but you probably figured that out) , Dinner Key,1973
So for example, there was an Australian pensioner, who had sailed his home built, 25 or so foot plywood boat from to Miami and many, many, many places in between. The boat was a wreck by any standard. It was a masterpiece of the pieced together. The standing rigging seemed comprised of a wire clamps and wire scraps. There were no winches, but you could hardly walk for the strewn collection of tackles and home made blocks that made up its sails or hauled its anchor. Its keel was a cast concrete fin of sorts.
There were holes in the deck and topsides that resulted from misdeeds and misjudgment. He had ring nailed patches over them at first using scraps of plywood left from building the boat, and later from seemingly less disposable items like bunk flats, locker doors and the galley table.
The hull was painted roughly mustard color, which apparently is the color you get when a boat yard lets you mix together all the minute puddles of paint left in the bottom of cans that hide in the shadows of the paint locker and would never have seen the light of day if not discovered by this intrepid voyager or an archeologist a few millennia later.
That boat had no electrical system. He burned kerosene to cook or provide light. He had no electronic devices. Navigation was by sextant, by eye or by golly. But somehow he had gone way more than half way around the world, and although his head did not possess two teeth in alignment with each other, he was one of the happiest humans I have ever met.
There was a US Navy lifer who had met an English charmer while stationed on Gibralter, father a few tikes, bought one of the most beautiful 1930's era, Nicholson Cutter and had taken his discharge 'find your way home' cash and had sailed the Med, cross the Atlantic, and down through the Caribbean and arrived for the duration in Miami when momma said it was time for the kids to get 'a proper education'.
For that day this was a fine yacht in most ways. The book-matched oak panelings come to mind when I think of how beautifully things could be done in times past. And yet by any standard, this was a pretty Spartan way to live. For although, their floating magic carpet was probably a 42 footer, she sailed on maybe a 25 foot waterline, and had all the room of a modern 32 footer. There was a rudimentary electrical system, that provided lighting, powered an ancient RDF, and cranked the petrol engine. Water came strictly via hand pump in fresh and salt varieties. Hot water was not available on the menu, but could just be gotten on the stovetop.
It was clearly camping in a big wooden box, and yet this was as close a knit family as you could meet. They'd sit about on an evening and entertain strangers with wholesome food, and the parents and kids taking turns telling their pieces and parts of great stories of the things they'd seen and done. It seemed as well choreographed as a vaudeville, "Take it, Joe", but yet it was all very low key, unself-conscious, matter of fact, warm, and honest rather than the kind of puffed up and self-aggrandizing descriptions that come from a video gaming, social media generation. They had no electronics but they had a life well lived.
And the last family that I mentioned, was a family of four who had sailed around the world in a conventionally rigged replica of William Albert Robinson's 'Svaap'. (Google it to get an idea of what that 32 footer looked like.)
The point being, for some folks it did not take much to go cruising. While times have changed, people's physical needs have not changed much. Which is not to say that expections have stayed the same. They haven't. I know that these were simpler times; a time when even "all the conveniences of home" were not all that convenient or comfortable. (I grew up in a house without air conditioning and can't recall ever being hot as a kid.)
I suspect that the success or failure of this venture will lie with the participants and what they are physically willing to do and live with and what they define as success or failure. I know that the lessons of the world are hardly the lessons that are required to get 'a good job when you grow up'. But I also have to think that what Laura and her family propose to do, should be doable and desirable for some families, while I also understand it would not appeal to most families who chose to go voyaging under sail.
By the same token, it does seem to me that given their limited financial resources, it does make sense that they try to find 'the right boat at the right price' and not just what shows up. The right boat will be less expensive to own, and reduce the cost of cruising by the options it offers, and improves safety, and is more comfortable for all on board.
And after all these words, (even I know there are an absurd number of them) I realize that I never did discuss the subject of this tread. Yes, you can find cruise ready boats, but only a very small percent of the boats that are called 'cruise ready' are really ready to do what you want to do. Boats, which have gone cruising are often warn out hulks loaded with gobs of warn out and outdated gear. Many are idiosyncratic reflections of their even more idiosyncratic skippers. We all learn to live with the oddities of our vessels and over time we get so used to them that these oddnesses become the norm and invisible to our consciousness.
(Its kind of like walking through the heeled over cabin of a boat you have owned for a long time. I no longer think that I always walk the same path, putting my right foot against the side of the galley and grab the turned wood deck brace with my right hand then step with my left against the aft settee while grabbing the sea rail on port with my left hand as I step and brace my right foot against the bolted base of the table leg, and then step my left foot against the other settee as my right hand grabs the mast to deck brace, and I duck below the lower head of the forward stateroom doorway while stepping over the raised sill, and ducking my head having run out of standing headroom, while my left hand reaches for the handhold at the lockers. I say I no longer an aware of this, but that is no longer true. When we pulled the mast out, and the mast to deck brace was off, I went to walk forward, and not finding the brace, I failed to duck and failed to step over the sill banging my head and stubbing my toe, and finding myself drapped over the edge of the vee-berth, a very banged up, perplexed and embarrassed curmudgeon, but that's another story for another time isn't it?)
But back on topic, in rare cases with rare individuals, these become so deeply embedded that they come to believe that there are advantages to these abnormalities and that all the world would want them if they were not brain washed by any one of a long list of conspirators. Unfortunately, most who sell so called 'ready to cruise' boats, fall in that category. Boats like that might save some money, but probably won't.
But within the world of possibilities, there are boats which have been lovingly put right, by folks who have not beat these boats to death, And in those rare cases (to quote L. Francis Herreshoff) "If her design is only slightly changed, the whole balance may be thrown out. If you equip her with deadeyes or fill her virgin bilge with ballast, the birds will no longer carol over her, nor will the odors arising from the cabin make poetry, and your soul will no longer be fortified against a world of politicians and fakers." If you see what I mean....
(Did I really say 'briefly'? Did you really believe me? )
Jeff