Coastal v. Bluewater cruiser, your thoughts

[EveningStar]

Good day to all:

I'm looking for opinions from all who have some knowledge in the differences between a "coastal cruiser" and a "bluewater cruiser". This question has perplexed me for sometime. I can't seem to find a good set of design criteria for both to compair. Common sense tells me that a good bluewater boat will have a beefier standing rig, a heavier displacement, probably a stiffer hull, maybe a few more layers of glass as well, sails would be heavier as well and have extra reef points. What else would I be missing? Can a sturdy quality build coastal boat be refitted for ocean travel?

In way of an introduction I'll give you an idea of myself, my sitiuation and my plan. My name is Matt, I'm 35yr old, married with three wonderful little deck hands. I've been sailing and cruising the Great Lakes for 30 of 35yrs in every thing from a Wayfarer to my current Catalina 30. More than just harbor hopping my family and I enjoy extended periods off the coast, 3-7 days before making port (more would be fine, just run into land by then up here). We live aboard during the Spring and Summer and I've lived aboard year 'round in the past (quite refreshing in Feb on Lake Huron!) Our plan is to leave for a circumnavigation in 10yrs or less. So now is the time to be working out the boat to do this in!

Thanks to all that respond. I'd be happy to email with anyone with more to say than can be included here.

Matt

[kwaltersmi]

Matt - You might want to check out Beth Leonard's book titled The Voyager's Handbook. Additionally, Good Old Boat magazine has been running a three part series called "A bluewater capable yacht", which is an adaptation/excerpt from Beth's book.

I believe the factors you mentioned in your first paragraph are part of the picture for a bluewater boat. But you also have to consider things such as cockpit size and drainage (generally smaller and well-drained for bluewater), deck layout (safe sidedecks, sturdier lifelines, etc.), cabin layout (quality seaberths, handholds, adequate storage/tankage), and additional factors which I'm sure I've missed but others will include.

[kwaltersmi]

For instance, check out the cockpit of this Pacific Seacraft Mariah:



Probably not ideal for a daysail with 5 or 6 or your family/friends, but it's a great little cockpit for offshore work. As I understand it, a small cockpit with good drainage lessens the chances for getting disasterously pooped.

[sailingdog]

Some of the primary differences between a bluewater boat and a coastal cruiser are that bluewater boats will have:

1) A kindlier Boat motion—narrower beam, softer bilge curves
2) More stowage and tankage
3) More Handholds—usually narrower interior
4) Generally have a smaller cockpit
5) Generally have heavier rigging
6) Deeper reef points, and often heavier sails

and so on...

I'd second reading Beth Leonard's The Voyager's Handbook, which just came out in a second edition, and also recommend Bill Seifert's Offshore Sailing.

[JohnRPollard]

Oh boy, you're going to get a lot of different opinions here. Many of them, like mine below, are little more than preferences based on sailing styles and circumstances. There are so many elements that make a good bluewater boat, but SailingDog's and Kwaltersmi's lists are a good starting point..

Among other things, I like wide, clear sidedecks, uncluttered by deck-piercing shrouds and stanchions. I like the security of raised bulwarks and tall 30 inch lifelines. I like the chainplates horizontally through-bolted into the hull, and stanchions similarly horizontally bolted to the raised bulwarks (both for strength and resistance to water intrusion). Also, there should be space for a junk-filled milk crate on the coachroof (just kidding on that one):

(Pacific Seacraft Crealock 31)

I also like a protected rudder, preferably with the propeller in an aperture:

(Morris 32)

Good anchoring systems are important too. I like the ability to store and launch several anchors from the bow and stern. Okay, maybe not this many, but you get the idea:

(Joshua 44)

I'm sure others will add their wish lists. This should be an interesting thread...

[PBzeer]

Nigel Calders The Cruising Handbook has a detailed discussion of what goes into a bluewater boat. He not only says what, but the why behind it.

[Tartan34C]

A blue water boat is a lot of different things to different people. Almost anything can be found sailing offshore and a lot of the boats doing trips are not what is considered offshore capable by the common definition. I think the most important thing is the skipper. A skilled skipper will survive with a marginal or even poor boat while an incompetent skipper will sink even a great boat. So my pat answer to a question like this is to say that if you need to ask the question you are not ready for offshore sailing.

There are a lot of different ways to sail a boat. Your tactics for storm survival for instance depends on a coordinated plan and the type of boats matters very much to the plan. If you think heaving to in extreme weather is the best way to go then you don’t want a fin keel boat with a spade rudder because that will almost never heave to during a storm. You will want a full keel or a full keel with a cut away forefoot and skeg hung rudder. On the flip side if you want to run then a full keel might not be your choice because of the quarter wave you get when running fast in heavy weather. Now a fin might be a better choice especially if you think towing a drag is a good idea. Of course the area you are sailing in will now make a big difference. If you are crossing oceans running in a storm is fine but in coastal work you may not have the room to run so a full keel boat which allows some choices for storm tactics might be a good idea. How much comfort and room you want also makes a difference in choosing a boat style. The more comfort and amenities you want means the more room you need and that means a longer light boat or a heaver shorter boat. You buy a boat by the pound but you pay to own her by the foot. Larger light boats cost the same to buy as short heavy boats but you will spend more to run a longer boat. The amount of weight it takes to support a person per day offshore is a fixed number so a boat with higher displacement is affected less by the crew and stores then a light displacement boat until you get into much larger boats.

Read as much as you can and sail on as many boats as you can to get some background. After a while you will start asking more pointed questions and start forming a game plan for both tactics and route planning that will usually narrow it down for you. You will get to a point where you, not everybody else, are comfortable with a style and you will know how she handles under all conditions and then you are ready to pick a boat.
Good luck and all the best,
Robert Gainer

[labatt]

Also, make sure you do searches for "bluewater" here... this has been a topic discussed many (many many many many) times before.

[Jeff_H]

This was written for an earlier discussion on the differences between Offshore Distance Cruisers, Coastal Cruisers and Performance Cruiser/Racers but it somewhat answers your question....

"This is the kind of a question that would require a book to answer properly, but I will take a stab at it. I apologize in advance for the length of my reply. Most of this response was written as a series of articles meant for another venue and so I am not sure that this flows all that well either, and for that I also apologize.

I think that the terms 'offshore' and 'coastal' get bandied about quite freely without any real thought about what the differences are. Even the term ‘race boat’ is a bit vague since all kinds of boats are raced in all kinds of differing types of competition. Race boats can therefore vary quite widely depending on the type of racing that they are intended for. I am assuming that you are not asking about small one design race boats as much as boats that at least to one extent or another can be raced or cruised in a pinch.

For the most part, race boats are optimized to perform better than the racing rating rule under which it is intended to race. This has a lot of implications. Under some rules (IMS and IRC for example) race boats are optimized to be fast and easy to handle across a wide range of conditions, producing great all around boats, but in the worst cases (International, Universal, CCA and IOR rules for example), the shape of the hulls, and design of the rig are greatly distorted to beat the shortcomings and loopholes in the rule, producing boats that become obsolete as race boats, and to a great extent as cruising boats as well, once the rule becomes history.

While the EU does have a system that certifies boats into one of 4 categories, this rating system was intended to remove trade barriers between the various EU countries. It represents the lowest common denominator between all of the regulations that pre-existed the formation of the EU. A boat that is certified as meeting the CE Small Craft Directive, in the offshore category, has met this minimum standard but it does not certify that the vessel is actually suitable for offshore use. For example the EU standards do not look at motion comfort, or the suitability of the interior layout for offshore use. Stripped out racers with minimal tankage and fragile rigs can and do obtain offshore certification. The U.S. does have the ORC, ABS, and ABYC standards which are somewhat helpful, but again does not certify that the vessel is actually suitable for offshore use

In a broad terms, a well made coastal cruiser should be more expensive than a dedicated offshore distance cruising boat, because it needs to be more complex and actually needs more sophisticated engineering and construction than most people will accept in a dedicated offshore boat. When new, the high tech materials used, and the first class hardware generally employed, make racers comparatively expensive as well. They are also expensive to maintain in full race condition since maintaining a smooth, fair bottom, good sails, running rigging. and sophisticated electronics does not come cheaply. But as they grow older and less competitive, they often become real bargains.

In a general sense, all boats are a compromise and with experience you learn which compromises make sense for your own needs and budget. Most times the difference between an optimized race boat, coastal cruiser and a dedicated offshore cruising boat is found in the collection of subtle choices that make a boat biased toward one use or the other. A well designed and constructed coastal cruiser will often make a reasonable offshore cruising boat and club level racer, while traditional dedicated offshore cruising boats usually make very poor racers or coastal cruisers.

Which brings up another key point. I would think that most knowledgeable sailors use the term ‘offshore cruiser’, they generally think of traditional, long waterline, full keeled or long fin keeled, heavy displacement, cutters or ketches. But in recent years there has been a whole series of ‘modern offshore cruisers’, which have been designed to take advantage of the research into stability, motion comfort, performance, and heavy weather sail handling that emerged as the result of the Fastnet and subsequent disasters. These boats tend to be longer for their displacement, often have fin or bulb keels, and carry a variety of contemporary rigs such as fractionally rigged sloop rigs. Depending on the specifics of the boat in question, a race boat may also make a reasonable coastal cruiser or offshore cruiser but will rarely be ideal as either and will generally take some adaptation to reach a reasonable standard for these applications.

Looking further, when I think of the distinctions between a raceboat, vs. coastal cruiser vs. a dedicated offshore boat, there are specific attributes that I would look for:
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-Structure:
A typical well-used coastal cruiser might only sail five hundred to a thousand miles a year. Most do less. A well-used offshore cruiser may do as much as 20,000 to 30,000 miles in a single year (10,000 15,000 being more typical). Whether traditional or modern, offshore cruising boats need to be designed to stand up to the long haul. A single year of offshore cruising can literally be the equivalent the abuse encountered in 20 or 30 years of coastal cruising.

Traditional offshore cruisers come in a range of flavors. Whether fiberglass, steel, alloy or timber, traditional offshore cruisers tend to have robust hulls that are simply constructed. Hull panels tend to be very heavy, accessible and maintainable. Internal framing tends to be widely spaced or almost non-existent. Engineering tends to be simple and reliable. Materials tend to be low tech, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The down side is that a weight goes into these structures using up valuable displacement that could be used for additional carrying capacity or ballast. Some of his weight is carried high in the hull and deck structure reducing stability and increasing roll and pitch.

Modern offshore cruisers tend to use higher tech materials and structural design. Some robustness and redundancy may be given up, but often the better of these newer designs have greater strength despite their lighter weight. These newer designs often take advantage of sophisticated framing systems and purposefully selected alloys or laminates. They often benefit from careful engineering intended to improve impact resistance and longevity.

Whether traditional or modern, offshore cruisers need to be able the cyclical loadings that insidiously wear out a boat over long passages. Larger margins of safety are required. In offshore cruising boats more than the other types, a little weight added, an often breed a whole lot more weight. A little added weight has a way of ricocheting through the whole design cycle. A little weight added means that perhaps the sail area needs to be increased. The increased sail area means a little more ballast. The added ballast perhaps means larger keel bolts and more robust transverse frames. This additional weight and sail area means higher stress on the rigging and so perhaps heavier rigging and attachment points get added, and that means perhaps a decrease in stability or perhaps a bit more ballast. The added weight means more drag and so fuel consumption increases and perhaps so does the size of the fuel tanks. And with all that added weight the designer is then faced with an under-canvassed design or else adding a sail area and risking going though another round of weight addition. Which is why, when all is said and done, traditional offshore cruising boats tend to be so much heavier than race boats, coastal cruisers or even more modern offshore designs.

Coastal cruisers generally benefit from better performance than offshore boats and do not have as stringent a requirement for a robust structure as and offshore boat. As a result coastal cruisers greatly benefit from lighter construction using modern materials and methods. Redundancy and self-sufficiency is less of a requirement. Fully lined interiors and other conveniences are often the norm on cruisers. Even quality coastal cruisers use molded force grids or pans that are glued in rather than laid up in place. Framing is often wider spaced and less robust. Hull panels are often cored and thinner than on an offshore boat. Rarely do they receive the careful workmanship that is required for a quality race boat, or the high safety factors ideally applied to a dedicated offshore cruiser. Then again they don’t need either as their use and abuse is generally much less harsh then encountered in the life cycles of either racing or offshore cruising boats.

Race boats generally benefit from the most sophisticated engineering of the three. Weight is the enemy of speed and motion comfort and so great attention is paid to reducing weight where weight can be reduced. But since breaking a boat is a very slow way around a racecourse, with some notable exceptions for specific racing classes, and racing periods, race boats are surprisingly tough. They are designed for very heavy loadings compared to coastal cruisers since racing crews will often carry on in no matter what nature throws at them, carrying far more sail than one might normally consider prudent. Their larger sail area to weight ratios, proportionately higher ballast ratios, their use of low stretch line and sails, the willingness to carry a lot of sail into higher wind ranges, and placement of the crew weight (often as much as 15% or more of the displacement of the boat) out on the rail as moveable ballst results in enormous strains compared to similar displacement offshore or coastal cruisers.

By the same token, race boats are designed with smaller safety margins so the engineering better be right. The problem with smaller safety margins is that over time race boats wear out quicker than other types of boats. Designers and owners somewhat see that as acceptable since rules also change over time making race boats more likely to become obsolete. Historically there is nothing man made (except perhaps a 15 year old computer) that is quite as obsolete as an obsolete rule beating race boat, and so historically designers are more willing to view them as disposable. At least with some of the newer rules, the boats being produced are good all around boats and quite a bit more robust and so may find a long useful life cycle.

Race boats generally use higher grade and higher tech materials. They are often the first to benefit from advances in structural design. They often have fewer openings in the hull and deck, which results in much greater stiffness and potentially less fatigue issues. Structural workmanship is often as good as it gets in the world of building yachts even if the interior finishes often seem a little crude. Race boats often gave very sophisticated internal framing systems, which take up room within the interior but make them far sturdier than their light weight would seem to imply.

All of that said, this has not always been the case, CCA era race boats often suffered from the mediocre engineering and poor laminating practices of the day, and IOR era and early IMS era boats often had fragile rigs.
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-Accommodations:
On a coastal cruiser there should be good wide berths, with enough sea berths for at least half of the crew for that night run back to make work the next day. An offshore cruiser is often handled by a smaller crew and so fewer berths and fewer sea berths are necessary. The berths on an offshore boat should be narrower and have leeboards or lee cloths. On both I am looking for a well-equipped galley but the galley needs to be larger on a coastal cruiser so that there is adequate space to prepare meals for the typically larger crew or a raft-up. Refrigeration is less important on a coastal cruiser, where ice is typically readily available at the next port of call, although the case can be made for no refrigeration or icebox if you are going offshore. Race boats tend to have Spartan accommodations. Offshore oriented race boats will often have enough seaberths to sleep half the crew on either side of the boat so that the off watch crew can be tacked along with the boat. Water tanks are often reasonably sized to take care of a race boat’s large crews, but fuel tankage is often a bad joke. Storage is generally huge to carry a race boat’s large sail inventory, but it does not work well for carrying groceries, spares and supplies.

-Cockpit:
A comfortable cockpit for lounging is very important on a coastal cruiser. It should be larger than an offshore boat to accommodate a larger number of people which is OK since pooping is less likely to occur doing coastal work. Dedicated offshore boats generally have smaller cockpits with very large drains. The cockpits are deeper and have taller coamings to protect the crew. This makes them less comfortable for lounging and less easy to move in and out of. Ideally offshore boats have bridge decks that are higher than the lowest point of the coaming and companionway slides that can be locked in place to avoid down flooding. All of which makes moving about a bit less convenient. Race boat cockpits tend to need the wide open spaces to house the vast crowds that inhabit them on the race course. If you think of a race boat cockpit at a mark rounding, you have a helmsman, mainsail trimmer, guy trimmer, sheet trimmer, pit person, and perhaps a grinder or two. That’s a whole lot of people and each need their own space to that voodoo that they do so well. Coamings and seats just get in the way. Modern racer-cruisers often have removable seats that double as cockpit lockers and which are removed for racing (along with a few hundred pounds of the ‘unnecessary gear’ used to deliver the boat to the race course).

-Deck hardware:
While gear for offshore boats need to be simple and very robust, coastal cruisers need to be able to quickly adapt to changing conditions. For the coastal cruiser greater purchase, lower friction hardware, easy to reach cockpit-lead control lines, all make for quicker and easier adjustments to the changes in wind speed and angle that occur with greater frequency. There is a big difference in the gear needed when, ‘we’ll tack tomorrow or the next day’ vs. auto-tacking or short tacking up a creek.
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-Displacement:
Offshore boats need to be heavier. They carry more stuff, period. The traditional rule of thumb was that an offshore boat needs to weigh somewhere between 2 1/2 and 5 long tons per person. A coastal cruiser can get by with less weight per crew person but generally is cruised by a larger crew. The problem that I have is that most offshore sailors and many coastal cruisers seem to start out looking for a certain length boat and then screen out the boats that are lighter than the displacement that they think that they need. This results in offshore boats and some coastal cruisers that are generally comparatively heavy for their length. There is a big price paid in motion comfort, difficulty of handling, performance and seaworthiness when too much weight is crammed into a short sailing length.

I suggest that a better way to go is to start with the displacement that makes sense for your needs and then look for a longer boat with that displacement. That will generally result in a boat that is more seaworthy, easier on the crew to sail, have a more comfortable motion, have a greater carrying capacity, have more room on board, and be faster as well. Since purchase, and maintenance costs are generally proportional to the displacement of the boat the longer boat of the same displacement will often have similar maintenance costs. Since sail area is displacement and drag dependent, the longer boat of an equal displacement will often have an easier to handle sail plan as well.

-Keel and Rudder types:
I would say unequivocally that for coastal cruising a fin keel is the right way to go here. The greater speed, lesser leeway, higher stability and ability to stand to an efficient sail plan, greater maneuverability and superior windward performance of a fin keel with spade rudder (either skeg or post hung) are invaluable for coastal work. Besides fin keels/bulb keels are much easier to un-stick in a grounding. In shallower venues, a dagger board with a bulb or a keel/centerboard is also a good way to go.

There is a less obvious choice when it comes to the keel and rudder type for offshore cruising. Many people prefer long or full keels for offshore work but to a great extent this is an anachronistic thinking that emerges from recollections of early fin-keelers. Properly engineered and designed, a fin keels with a skeg hung rudder can be a much better choice for offshore work. There is the rub. Few fin keelers in the size and price range that most people purchase for offshore cruising are engineered and designed for abuses of dedicated offshore cruising. That said, popular offshore cruisers like the Pacific Seacraft, and Valiants have adapted skeg-hung spade rudders while the Island Packets have chosen to use a rudder post hung spade rudder.

Of course race boats thrive on stability and low drag. For them, under most racing rules, there is only one choice, fin keels and spade rudders. Under some of the older rules, (International, Universal and CCA) race boats often had fin keels with attached rudders. This was the worst of all worlds. The boats do not track as well as a spade rudder but have all of the negatives of a keel hung rudder (greater exposure to damage being close to the depth of the keel, higher loading, less maneuverable). Newer race boats have minimal foil area and large bulb keels. This combo was chosen for greater stability and therefore sail carrying capacity as well as minimal drag. As a side benefit this keel type has been demonstrated to offer increased seaworthiness and motion comfort that results from a significantly lower center of gravity relative to the vertical center of buoyancy, better dampening, and the ability to stall at high side loadings which reduces the likelihood of being rolled in a large breaking wave. In US Naval Academy studies of groundings, bulb keels were also shown to be the easiest to extract from a grounding, which is a very good thing considering that more modern race boats generally have significantly deeper drafts.
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-Ground tackle:
Good ground tackle and rode-handling gear is important for both cruising types but all-chain rodes and massive hurricane proof anchors are not generally required for coastal cruising. Race boats often lack proper anchor handling gear or in the most extreme cases, they may even lack fixed cleats to tie up with. Frankly from the racers point of view these are simply things that get in the way of that perfect hoist, douse , tack, or jibe.

-Sailplan:
At least on the US East Coast, (where I sail and so am most familiar with) light air performance and the ability to change gears is important for a coastal cruiser. It means more sailing time vs. motoring time and the ability to adjust to the 'if you don't like the weather, wait a minute' which is typical of East Coast or Great Lakes sailing. If you are going to gunkhole under sail, maneuverability is important. Windward and off wind performance is also important.

With all of that in mind, I would suggest that a fractional sloop rig with a generous standing sail plan, non- or minimally overlapping jibs, and an easy to use backstay adjuster is ideal. This combination is easy to tack and trim or change gears on. I would want two-line slab reefing for quick, reliable on the fly, reefing. I would want an easy to deploy spinnaker as well.

For offshore use, traditional cruising boats tend to have a very high drag relative to their stability and so low aspect ratio rigs are important. Depending on the size of the boat, cutter and ketch rigs are the time-tested solution. They work reasonably well as long as simplicity and performance are not important.

More modern, lower drag offshore cruisers seem to be using fractional sloop