Gonna need a bigger boat

My lovely wife and I were taking about our boating plans. The current thinking is that we’ll do a lot of local New England trips with the Oday 19.

Currently we don’t plan on hauling it south for the winter. There was a lot of discussion about that. The big issue with the two of us on the Oday is the bathroom facilities, or the lack of them. We have a simple bucket composting head on the boat. That’s fine for a few days on the water. The issue is that we have to rearrange everything in the tiny cabin to use it. If only one person is on the boat it can be set for both sleeping and head access. With two people there’s just no room.

To spend the winter on a boat we are going to need one big enough for a separate head. Another consideration is that some of the places we want to stay require regular pump outs so we need a boat with a holding tank. Right now we probably can’t fit a bigger boat into our budget.

So what will we do next winter? Looks like one more winter of camping. We’ll bring our Sea Eagle double kayak with us. My lovely wife wants to scout out some anchorages using the kayak. That could be fun. If all goes well buying a bigger boat should be in the budget for the next winter.

Every year there are more and more older boats hitting the market. The leading wave of the baby boomers are aging out of the sport. Fewer people are going sailing so there’s a glut on the market. Those wealthy enough for newer boats aren’t even going to look at the older and smaller ones. That’s perfect for us as we plan on getting the smallest boat that will fit our needs. They are a lot less work and much cheaper to maintain.

It’s nice to be healthy enough to get serious about future plans.

-Sixbears