Research Notes
The $575,000 Catana 47 with a $200,000 receipt and no new sails
The upgrade list on this one is honest work — it's the two words missing from it that set my offer.
Research Notes
The 172-day number changed how I'm watching listings
The aggregate says 7.2% off ask; my own worksheet says the number splits into two pools, and the median hides both.
Seamanship
The medical kit I'm building for four kids offshore
Our second kid ran a 103°F fever the week we were reading the DAN manual for the fifth time. My wife looked at me and said, “This, but nine hundred miles from land.” Here’s the offshore medical kit I’ve actually settled on for four kids.
Research Notes
The leg I keep rehearsing: Galápagos to Nuku Hiva
I keep sailing the same 2,965 miles from a desk in Bend, and the weather files keep giving me the same four-line answer.
Research Notes
The generator line item I can't leave alone
Thirty grand on, thirty grand off — one row of our electrical budget has changed a dozen times since spring, and it still isn't settled.
Research Notes
What I'm reading: the family that taped a departure date to the kitchen wall
Caspar Craven put a departure date on his kitchen wall five years out; the cost table in the back of his book is what I can't stop rereading.
Research Notes
A boat I'm watching: a 2020 Outremer 51 in Newport for $1.15M
A lightly used carbon-rigged Outremer 51 just surfaced in Newport at about 55 cents on the new-boat dollar, and I keep coming back to the listing.
Gear
The $40,000 downwind wardrobe: what I'd actually order for our 50-foot cat
The most popular downwind sail in the ARC fleet disappointed three out of four owners who counted on it. Here's what I'd order instead, with prices.
Research Notes
The 3,000-mile leg I keep re-studying
Galápagos to the Marquesas is where our whole plan either works or doesn't, so I wrote down the actual GRIB criteria I'd want before casting off.
Catamaran
The hybrid-drive math I ran when Seawind announced the electric 1270
Seawind is putting electric drives in the 1270 next year, and I spent a week trying to talk myself into wanting them. The spreadsheet keeps sending me back to diesel — just not the diesel boat you're picturing.
Research Notes
The cruising-budget framework I keep measuring our plan against
Beth Leonard sorts cruising budgets into three tiers, and re-sorting our worksheet into her columns made it obvious which one our short list of boats actually lives in.
Research Notes
Half the new ARC boats are multihulls — and the side of the trade I keep underweighting
If the new-build mix has been roughly half multihulls for years and the used market hasn't fully caught up, the resale math on a 2028 catamaran purchase looks different than the brokers are pricing today.