QUESTION:
We are considering purchasing a steel ketch with multiple headsails, 55' with a 7'6" draft for blue water cruising. Most of our reading has discouraged anything larger than 45' as it is difficult to handle for a couple, and also, advise on shallower drafts. Have you any advice regarding the lenght and draft on the boat we are considering. Thanks, Selena.

ANSWER:
55' is a lot of boat. Because it is a ketch each sail should be relatively smaller than on a sloop-rigged boat, but.... Have you tried raising the sails? How easy is it for one person? What are the sailing characteristics of the boat? Does it have much weather-helm, and how easy is it to balance the sails? How easy is it to move about on, above and below decks, when the weather is blowing briskly and the seas are not-nice?

In and of itself, a 55' boat has been single-handed by many people (and remember that for 16 hours each day of a passage one or the other of you will be single-handing the boat). The problem is that with increased size you get increased maintenance - cost and just the labor involved in caring for the boat. Costs for marinas are, of course, much higher. Ground tackle has to be heavier - here your strength in manhandling a 55 pound (22 kilo) anchor and its chain is a major consideration. There will come a day when your electric windlass fails and you will have to haul all that weight up using mostly muscle.

When the weather kicks up, you want a boat that is easy to move about on. Lots of hand-holds, no great expanses that you have to try to negotiate without something to hold onto.

Where do you plan to cruise? Watermelon has a 7'2" draft and we found very few places where we could not go. I can think of only three anchorages we avoided because of our draft, and one of them was an uncharted bay in the Solomon Islands - in other words, we missed no place everybody else wanted to visit because of our draft. I liked our deeper draft. Watermelon was a more stable boat and sailed wonderfully to weather because of that lovely fin keel. (But perhaps you have been told that "gentlemen don't go to weather". We did. A lot)

Your draft will be a problem in Cooktown, Far North Queensland. A few places elsewhere up the Oz coast, but not really much if you're careful (the Great Sandy Strait is do-able, but you will have to be a tad alert). It will also be a problem in the Bahamas. Other than that, I can't think of many places that you will find the draft to be a problem.

I personally don't like steel boats. I think that they require too much care, and problems are more difficult to detect. Lockers are open to the bilge in order to prevent standing water in the locker. That means you can never count on having a dry storage compartment. I would have hated that.

As a steel hull gets older the steel plates get thinner, and it requires a more competent surveyor to determine the actual condition of the hull. There was a 50+ foot boat sold in American Samoa, and the buyers almost sank the boat when they tried to sail it to Tonga - the boat had been standing for too long, there were pinhole leaks in many places, the hull in some places was quite thin and "oil-canned", worrying them that it was going to fail in more places. They made it to a safe harbor but I don't think that the boat ever left there. (this was many years ago and I've not heard any updates on the boat, so I could be wrong). they did not have the boat surveyed before buying it - a big mistake for any boat, and particularly for this boat.

Yet many people swear by a steel boat, and lots like all the space that a larger boat provides. You will have to consider your own skill level (the less experience you have, the smaller the boat should be), the condition of the boat (if it's not in "bristol" condition, do you have the money and/or energy to bring it to blue water standards?), and your pocketbook - can you afford the mooring and care that a larger boat requires?

Just a small aside. Peter and I lived in a very large home. My kitchen was bigger than many homes' bedrooms, and every other room was equally large, including a large basement into which we could store lots and lots of "stuff". In fact, here's a link to our "dinghy in the dining room" picture - a 10' Boston Whaler that we rigged in the dining room (with an 18' ceiling, it was the only room we felt comfortable putting up the mast and sail). Lots of room. Link

We went from that to a 39' boat. It seemed that all the compromises entailed my doing without something more. However, after 6 months on the boat I found that I didn't need all those "things" that I had given up, and only had to buy a very few items to make our boat our home for the next 17 years.

I hope that this has been of some help. Your choice of a boat will be a very personal decision, though, and only you can judge whether you can and want to handle the boat you eventually choose.

Fair winds,
Jeanne

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