Written during summer where little sailing was done because our lifestyle had ceased to suit our current boat, THIS rambling stream of thought is what got us hunting for a "real" boat, and what eventually landed us in a Triton 6 months later. I find it amazing that the starting point can be pinpointed so precisely. I'll leave it to you all to imagine her response to this, but suffice it to say that now (9 months later) her desire for a weekender clearly overrode my desire to build a runabout.......
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ok, I've got a second to ramble, so I'm going to ramble. read and ignore it at your leisure.
so after all of this reading and sketching and tinkering and thinking about boatbuilding, these are my thoughts, and I wish to share them with you.
need to decide between power and sail
need to keep it small and simple enough so that I'll finish it before I get bored with it.
along the same lines, it needs to be small enough to build in the backyard barn (as opposed to the branford barn) so that I can have opportunity to work on it in dribs and drabs on weeknights, instead of exclusively devoting entire weekends to it.
ok, so it needs to be small. that probably means less than 20' long.
that kinda runs counter to our need to have a boat for weekend trips (bunks and a toilet), which generally means 25' or more.
so let's talk more about this need for a weekend trip boat.... does it need a full-fledged dedicated "cabin"? or can it be something that just has a little cuddy forward for keeping clothes and bedstuff dry, and having an enclosed head, but the actual sleeping happens out back on sleeping bags, probably under a bimini enclosure? (how much like camping should this be?)
Split-thinking: Part of me wants to have this HomeBuilt boat be our "dreamboat" since I'll be investing so much of myself in it and obessing over it as I'm bound to be... the other part of me is thinking of this HomeBuilt boat as sort of our secondary, "mess-around" boat. even when we have a real slip somewhere, it lives on a trailer.
the immediate benefit of it being the secondary messaround boat is that it doesn't need to be the big weekend-cruiser. it can just be the little daytripper. smaller, cheaper, simpler to build.
so, let's say (striclty for the sake of my ramblings. please offer any contradictory opinion you might have) that we go with the HomeBuilt boat as the little daytripper. power or sail?
This is coupled with the issue of the bigger weekender. which would we rather have as power, and which as sail? (I don't think we want both sail or both power, do you??) I'm leaning toward sail for the big weekender, because it's easier to get bunks and a head in the deeper belly of a sailboat, whereas getting bunks and a head in a powerboat means sacrificing deck or cockpit space because the engine's in the way. so therefore (again, strictly for the purposes of this ramble...) the daytripper should be a powerboat.
that kinda works out, because it gives us a nice comfy sailboat for the whole year, and a smaller power daytripper for bombing around during the no-wind period during the middle of the summer.
yeah, that also works because no matter what boat we have as the weekender, it will certainly not have air conditioning, and who the hell wants to sleep on the un-airconditioned boat when it's 90 degrees outside? so it makes sense that the boat better suited for the hot weather is NOT the weekend-capable one.
ok, so let's talk powerboats. daytrip powerboats. should probably still have some kind of a head, even if it's really just a glorified bucket-in-a-box. that's no problem.
what about speed? fast enough to dash over to port jeff for lunch? or something of the slow-and-stable school, like a mini-lobsterboat or a minitug? do we want to stop and drop anchor to eat our samwiches and wheatthins, or would we rather just munch while the boat is lumbering along to whatever destination (or no destination)
fast boat.... hey, I've always loved those old mahogany chriscraft runabouts. just gotta find a design that accommodates 4 people, 2 dogs, a cooler and a mini-head.
slow boat.... does the idea of a smallish lobsterstyle boat or a minitug (will probably be pretty silly looking) appeal to you? I'm guessing that it does.
I'm leaning toward a faster design. I figure 15 knots at least, again because we'll want the speed to generate some wind to relieve the August heat/mugginess.
