Issue 22 : Jan/Feb 2002
How did the term “moving up to a bigger boat” become so prevalent in our language? I suppose we say “moving up to a bigger house,” which might then place us in a more expensive neighborhood. Are there parallels in our sailing world? Our boats, large and small, wind up side by side in the same marinas. In fact, “moving up to a larger boat” may well exclude the new owner from any number of marinas built some time ago. The deeper draft may exclude them from some of the best anchorages, too.
I remove that expression, “moving up,” from Good Old Boat articles whenever I find it. It offends me to think that if a boater chooses to sail a smaller boat or has not yet purchased a larger boat, that sailor is therefore “down.” What are we in our 20-footers if someone else just “moved up” to a 30-footer? Slum dwellers?
If our boats are right for us and the kind of sailing we do, we need have no regrets if someone else has a larger boat. There also need be no status points associated with whether that boat is new or used.
John Vigor shows us in his book, Twenty Small Sailboats to Take You Anywhere, that many smallish (20 to 32 feet) sailboats are perfectly seaworthy, capable ocean crossers. They can be handled competently by a couple, can be accommodated in any marina, and can sail into most anchorages. They’re affordable, maintainable, and fun.
Used boats of this size are plentiful. Why? Because 10 and 20 years ago they were considered to be grand sailboats on every scale. The 40-footers out there were the rare behemoths in the harbor . . . noteworthy freaks for the super-rich. These sailboats could not have been classified within the group of “sailboats for the rest of us,” although many of the same 40-footers fit that classification today.
Not so long ago, real people were sailing the 20- to 35-footers. When did those boats go from being advertised as family coastal cruisers and offshore sailboats to something the larger magazines now classify as “weekenders and daysailers”?
This magazine is dedicated to the proposition that all sailboats are created equal. Bigger boats have disadvantages along with the well-touted advantages. Bigger is not necessarily better, and it is not, in our terminology, “a move up.” Selecting a larger boat is a choice some sailors make. Nothing more.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
