Sailboat shopping and home again

Ah, the joys of living up in the mountains. There aren't a lot of sailboats for sail in hill country. So when we go boat shopping, it's a road trip. Just did over 350 miles looking at sailboats.

The short answer is that we didn't buy any. There was a nice boat -well taken care of, almost new sails, and with all equipment in tip top shape. The big downside was the trailer it was sitting on. The trailer was not designed for boat ramps. The boat owner kept his boat in a marina. When it would come time to pull the boat out of the water, the marina would use its lift and carry the boat to the trailer. The trailer is this massive steel and timber construction. The main feature is a custom cradle that the marina lift would gently lower the boat into. Once secured, the boat owner would carefully, and slowly, drive the one mile road to his house.

So we have a pretty good boat sitting on a trailer that would need massive reconstruction for boat ramp use. My lovely wife and I even tossed around the idea of buying a regular boat trailer and selling the one with the cradle. Then I came up with ideas on how to turn the trailer into a boat ramp trailer. Well it could be done but it would always be a pig. Right now I don't see how it's possible separate the nice boat from the awful trailer for a reasonable sum of money.

Ever see something that looks good on-line and then a bit different close up? One boat we looked at had all the features one could want. When we got there we discovered the owner did not lie. All those features were on the boat. The problem was that the boat had seen way too many rough miles. Everything looked good in the photos, but close up the wear and tear was obvious. I thanked him and moved on.

In short, we did a lot of driving to find out what we didn't want. That's valuable too. Right now we've yet to see anything in our price range that's enough of a step up from what we've got to make the deal worth it.

Looking at other boats I did get some ideas about a few changes on my boat, so it wasn't a total waste of time.

One good thing, the van ran really well, including the waste veggie fuel system.

-Sixbears