While we burn through a bunch of video work over the next couple weeks I’m sharing some of my favorite skin on frame images.
14 years ago I built this 18 foot row/sail boat from a Joel White plan that I modified. It wasn’t a pretty boat but it was fast, and twitchy, and terrifying to sail empty. Weighing just a little bit over 100 pounds there was barely enough foil in the water to steer.
The maiden voyage loaded was three weeks downwind in the Sea of Cortez, which I had somehow convinced myself would be a moderately calm body of water compared to the ferocious offshore conditions on the Oregon coast. This was not true, and 12 inches amidships is not a lot of freeboard when you’re sailing in 25 knot winds and 6 foot chop.
Ultimately this trip led me to become disillusioned with small boat camp cruising. You have all the same navigation and sailing responsibilities as you do in a large boat but without the ability to bash through when things get rough, or a decent cabin to recover in.
But you can land it on the beach you say? Well, sort of. If there is a chop greater than 12 inches coming ashore it swamps the boat before you can pull it up, and even if not you still have to unload EVERYTHING in boat and pull it up the beach above the tide line on rollers then reverse the entire process the next day. It’s absolutely exhausting compared to kayak camping or sailing a yacht.
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This post was originally featured on our Instagram feed.
See the original post and discussion here.
