Boat Design Archives * Wandering Shannon

Our Search for a Boat

After owning a wonderful Tartan 34c for about 7 years and refitting her to the point where we were spending the majority of our free time in the summers cruising the LI Sound, we decided that we needed a boat that would allow for some more room for the family and would extend our cruising grounds.

Life changes, an increase in experience and education around boating, and the memories that we were providing for the children led to a rearranging and reprioritizing of the search for a new boat. I went from casually looking at “boat porn” on the computer to voraciously researching designers, rig types, and construction methods.

Continue reading “The First Look at Saoirse”

How to get started living the dream-

The amount of people that I have met over the past several years with an interest or dream of long term cruising or living aboard has been surprising. Often, these people are the outliers even within the boating community. For the most part the vast majority of people in boating are more than content to stick to a very local cruising ground, the occasional charter, or the around the buoy races on a Wednesday night.

Those of us with a desire to go further, to make passages and explore and experience remote anchorages , seem to be drawn to each other like magnets. No matter the age, experience, income level, or background. Cruisers, or would be cruisers, seem to find each other, and the exchange of ideas and knowledge of places, products and people that occurs within just minutes of meeting is a truly rich experience to be a part of.

My goal in taking the time to record my own process of becoming a cruiser has several purposes. First, is to keep a record for myself. This being a large and unfamiliar undertaking for me it will, hopefully, help to organize and preserve my thought process and that of the project. Second, is to help any others who may be considering a similar path. Whether this serves as an inspiration or a warning has yet to be seen, but I feel the more information we can arm ourselves with the better decisions we can make regarding our own path.

In a way, writing down my own thoughts and ideas is terrifying. It’s rare that people truly expose their thoughts to others, especially when inexperienced or doubtful about the outcome the actions those thoughts may effect. I am fortunate enough to be surrounded and have met some of the very best in the marine industry and cruising world and intend to pass along whatever education they bestow upon me. My sincerest desire is that knowledge and opinions are gained shared both for myself and for others.

So to my mind this boat journey can be broken down into several broad categories and then further dissected:

The Boat