Yara50 wrote:Steve, interesting to hear that you have a keelboat as well as the Investigator 563. Please tell us more about it, the whys and the way it works. I must confess to lusting after a keelboat again, but would find it hard to part with my Investigator. In my case there is no way I could have the time for a keelboat at the moment, so your story could be interesting.
Its a real long story Ian, I basically just always wanted a yacht , an interest inherited from my father,
My wife and I own a small business that is open 7 days a week, it drives me Insane so I bought an Investigator to get me away from our shop. I was just going to go out and buy a keel boat to start with but I thought a trailer sailer would be better way of getting my wife into sailing, hind sight tells me I would have been better off spending the money on offshore sailing tuition with her instead of buying 563.
I have to travel 200kms to get it to the water and sail it at Freo-Rockingham, Busselton and Albany. We enjoy the sailing so much that we decided we must get something we can go places in so my wife bought me a ss 34. I had the 34 in Albany and I use to escape once a week to stay on it and sail it, The trouble is now we are so tied to our business that we don't get much time off, Maybe one day a month at the moment. I removed the 34 from the water, brought it home and we are getting it ready to go cruising. Hopefully by xmas it will be back in the water and we will then put our business on the market.
One of the things we like more about the bigger boat is the ability to move around easier, my wife feels alot safer on it and therefore gains more confidence when she goes about general sailing tasks.
The displacement is around 5 tons so its alot more stable and less effected by chop than the 563, Probably the worse thing about the 34 is you have very little steerage in reverse, Maneuvering in a marina when its windy is difficult. You try to do maneuvers slow and carefully but if the wind gets a hold of the bow and with little or no reverse steerage, you can get out of shape real quick. We have had lengthy discussions before we leave the dock to discuss how we are going to get the boat back into the pen if it is windy when we return, really just a communication and practice thing.
The cost of keeping the boat is quite high, Aprox 5k a year for a 12m pen and if you need hardstand services, $25> a day but My wife and I don't really spend our money on anything else , no flash cars, no overseas holidays, no expensive dinning etc so Its really quite cheep, some caravan parks charge more than that to keep an onsite van for a year. The biggest problem I see with keelboats is when you go to sell them and you really want to Quit them, you must be very realistic about its value, Trying to sell a boat for 3 years may cost you 20k for trying. Its very much a buyers market.
So my good points about the smaller 563.
Its trailerable and easy to tow.
Relatively stiff little boat to sail
Small, easy to maintain rig and sails, most parts are easy to source from local chandlery stores
Easy to go ashore
And the 34
More room!! easier to move around on and go about sailing
Sails unbelievably well, helm is easier and sail plan seems easier to balance
Lots more room in the cabin, more privacy, basically more room to live
Handles the rougher weather,( The West coast and South coast are pretty unprotected. Not alot of Navigable in land water ways to sail in)
More practical for long Ocean passages
I still have my 563 and sail it as much as I can, I will probably keep it forever and my boys can have it when I'm done, same for the 34.