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.
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.
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.
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.
Research Notes
The Jordan Series Drogue bridle math I keep redoing for a 50-foot cat
On a monohull the JSD is solved physics. On a cat you have two transoms, two snatch loads, and a bridle geometry nobody quite agrees on.
Research Notes
A 2017 Leopard 50 in Tortola at $595K — what I'd actually offer
Same four-cabin layout as the Saba 50, $100K cheaper — until you cost out the saildrive bellows, the rig service, and the sails the charter program never replaced.
Research Notes
A June Bermuda–Azores window — what the chart has to show me first
The Bermuda-to-Azores window in late May is a high you want parked, a low you want predictable, and a 500mb chart I'd rather see flat than amplified.