[PUP] PPM, Convergence, narrow boats, etc.

[John Marshall]

What continues to impress me are the folks who buy a production  
trawler-type boat and then cruise the world, and then find a ready  
market for their boat when they return. There are lots of folks out  
there doing it on Krogen's and Nordhavns.

They might not have the ultimate passagemaker as defined on this list,  
but if they take their time and wait for the weather windows, its not  
that hard to circumnavigate. You just have to keep going, bit by bit.

The first couple I heard of that did this, the Sinks on a Nordhavn 46,  
didn't think it was a big deal. They are a very unassuming, retired  
couple. Came home after their circumnavigation, tied up the boat and  
went on to do other things. Boat sold easily and I think they got all  
their initial capital out of it. Lots of others are out there now  
doing it as well.

The Flanders, who are currently cruising on Egret, another N46, are in  
the middle of their journey (after going around the horn a couple of  
times) and their statistics on number of "weather days" is  
interesting. They'd completed 7+ years and more than 41,000 nautical  
miles of world cruising. Out of 2639 days at sea:

1) Only 3% of the time (86 days) have they been more than a day's run  
from a safe port.
2) Only 9 partial days of really nasty seas (.003%) when they couldn't  
take shelter. Four of those days were by choice (working to a schedule  
and ignoring the forecast) and five days not by choice.
3) None of those nasty days even approached survival conditions.

Even though their average speed has only been 5.8 knots (and thus they  
couldn't outrun or avoid weather) the state of weather forecasting  
(they hired a private forecaster, Omni) has improved to the degree  
that you can avoid most of the nastiness these days. As long as you  
let the forecast be your sole guide of when to start a passage.

While it seems very sexy to have a purpose-built ultimate passagemaker  
that can cruise through a hurricane, those boats tend to be very hard  
to resell and often at great losses. In contrast, the mid-range  
production boats ($500-600K range used) often return most of their  
capital investment after a number of years and still get you there  
just fine. I've been unable to find record of a single incident where  
a Krogen or Nordhavn has been lost at sea due to weather (hitting the  
shore is another matter).

You have to also consider the ease of resell and return of capital  
when you look at costs. Few people buy a boat and keep it forever.

John Marshall