CHAPTER 1

Thinking about Your Boat

There are lots of questions to ask yourself when you start to think about buyinga boat. Whether you can afford it is certainly one of the most important, butyou must also consider how you would move it, where you would store it, andwhether you truly have the time to devote to this pastime. But let's start witha question that may help you answer some of the others: How big a boat do youneed?

HOW BIG?

Trailerable sailboats with cabins range from a minimum of about 15 feet to amaximum of about 25 feet. The natural tendency for most folks is to covet thebiggest boat they can get. Not so fast, Popeye—the biggest boat isn'talways the best. To see why, let's use an extreme example—the Lancer 28.

The Lancer 28 was introduced in 1977, when trailer sailers were quite popular.This was about the most boat that would fit on a trailer. To haul a boat on thehighway without a special permit, the beam must be no wider than 8 feet (thoughsome states have increased this limit to 8 feet 6 inches). But an 8-foot beam isconsidered narrow for a boat this size; it was a compromise the designer made tofit the boat on the trailer.

Another compromise was a fairly shallow, wide keel. In order to keep the loadedheight down, the designer used a shallow keel, which doesn't add much stability.And since the keel is so shallow, the ballast is up high, where it doesn't donearly as much good. Compare this to a conventional 28-footer, where the draftaverages around 4 feet. The keels on these conventional boats are commonlysolid—not hollow—chunks of lead or iron. With that much weight sodeep in the water, the nontrailerable boat has a lot of stability compared tothe Lancer. The reason for the Lancer's wide keel also has nothing to do withperformance—the designer wanted a boat with lots of headroom, so hedropped the cabin sole down into the keel. The result is sort of a fiberglasstrench that you stand in, and the keel is wider than it should be for bestsailing performance. If you stand in the trench, the boat has 6 feet 2 inches ofheadroom—an unheard-of space on most trailerables. This feature mayenhance sales, but it does little to improve sailing.

But the real drawback to the Lancer 28 is out of the water. Once on the trailer,this boat is a monster. It weighs almost 5,000 pounds. You can forget pullingthis rig with anything less than a large vehicle with a dedicated tow package.And a panic stop at 55 miles per hour might turn you into something like apressed turkey sandwich. I talk more about tow vehicles and road safety inChapter 6, but this illustrates some of the problems with taking a large objectlike a boat out of its natural element and hauling it over the road.

It must be said that while a Lancer 28 isn't my particular cup of tea, manyother folks are quite happy with it. There's an active owners' website atwww.lancerowners.com. If you'll be sailing in relatively sheltered conditions,and if you don't plan on hauling the boat overland very often, the Lancer 28might be a good choice for you.

As I noted at the outset, the Lancer 28 is an extreme example of the trailerablecategory. At about 26 feet, trailerable boats stop making sense. If you reallywant a large boat, then you would do well to consider a model that is nottrailerable. But be ready for a significantly larger commitment of time andmoney. Boat design always involves a series of trade-offs and compromises; ifyou set your sights a little smaller, the trade-offs required to make a boattrailerable become less severe. Nearly all sailboats around 20 feet long can belaunched, transported, and stored on a trailer. Some are designed for easylaunching and trailering. Others are optimized for sailing ability, and are moredifficult to launch and haul. Most are somewhere in between.

You can learn to evaluate a trailerable sailboat design by looking at a few keyfactors, such as the specifications, the hull outline, and the sail plan. Whileyou can't predict everything from such information, it will allow you to makeeducated guesses about performance on the water, ease of launching, ease ofhauling, and other factors. It's not my intention to make anyone into a navalarchitect—I'm far from one myself—but we can infer, for example,that a boat with a tiny swing keel is going to make more leeway than a boat witha larger keel. And don't worry if you don't know that leeway means the way thata sailboat gets pushed slightly downwind as she sails; I cover this in detail inupcoming sections.

So if a Lancer 28 is too big, what's the best size for a trailerable sailboat?Of course, there's no single answer that fits everyone. Instead, consider thisquestion: What kind of sailing do you want to do, and where do you want to doit?

WHAT KIND OF SAILING DO YOU WANT TO DO?

The sport of sailing can be generally divided into racing or cruising. Someboats are specifically designed for racing only—every feature is built forspeed, and all other considerations are secondary. Other boats are specificallydesigned to be cruisers, where strength and load-carrying capacity areparamount. Many are called cruiser-racers, and are marketed to do both well, butin reality that's a difficult balancing act. Because trailerables are limited bylength, weight, and beam, you won't find many that are said to be purelycruising boats.

Presumably you live within a reasonable distance to a body of water that's bigenough to sail in. Even this isn't an absolute requirement—many sailboatowners live far from their regular sailing grounds. But chances are you livenear a lake, large river, or, if you're lucky, the coast. On average, what's theweather like there? Some places, like San Francisco Bay, are known forconsistently strong winds. In that region, heavier boats with shorter masts andsmaller sail areas are the norm. On the other hand, the winds at many inlandlakes (like...