On bigger not always being better...

An interesting argument of convenience, well worth watching (though it might just piss you off), and a crisis of arithmetic...

There's a boat nearby for sale that is in good condition and real cheap. A combination that always grabs my attention...

The problem is it is simply too big at 55-feet.

It's funny but not so long ago when we were sailing Loose Moose 2, someone sailing a 52-foot Irwin, for instance, would, more than likely, be the biggest boat in an anchorage... Sure, there were exceptions but they were few and far between and the average real cruising boat seemed to be somewhere around the 34/35-foot zone.

I'd guess these days the average is closer to 45-feet...

The downside of larger boats are many and varied. The obvious is that they are more expensive to buy, outfit, and maintain. The less obvious is that they take more physical oomph to run and that at the 45-foot zone they start being beyond the unaided physical capability of the sort of people (middle aged and older couples) who have them. I've lost count of the many occasions we've come across boats in trouble because a system failed and the crew was unable to handle the extra physical load.

Throw in the fact that the bigger boat is more work with bigger problems and, all of a sudden, boats in the 28-38 foot range start looking all kinds of attractive.

That said, I can see the way a larger boat might be attractive if approached from a different mindset but I'll leave that to a future post...

Listening to Michael Nesmith

So it goes...