books to help buying a sailboat

Gustafson (1991) is a good survey of the issues involved in buying a boat. He gave me a nice overview of the whole process of buying a boat. He pointedly asks the basic question.

Do you really want to buy a boat? It might well be cheaper to sail without owning a boat, and most people do. This is a tough question to ask because it puts your budget up against your dreams. It is an important question. Buying a boat is expensive and selling one is expensive too. If you buy a boat, hardly use it or can't afford it, and then sell it, you will be noticeably poorer for the experience.

Most people don't rent cars because they use their car all the time. But most people don't sail all the time. Renting boats can be a sensible – and even great – way of going sailing. It is possible to rent boats in the most exotic locations in the world. We have rented boats for day sails on Lake Lanier, Georgia and Charleston South Carolina. (Not exotic, I know.) We have chartered boats for the last few years in the British Virgin Islands and the Grenadines. We have had a great time each year in the Caribbean for less than the cost of docking a sailboat in Charleston, S.C.

Gustafson (1991) is not readily available any more. Still, I found it a nice, readable book that could be digested in several hours. It assumed as much as I knew: basically nothing. If you can find a copy somewhere, I strongly suggest reading it. It really helped me.

Daniel Spurr's (2004) Your First Sailboat is readily available and overall is is a better book than Gustafson (1991).

A major difference is a basic one: Spurr assumes that you will buy a sailboat. Even Chapter 9's title, "What Will It Cost Me?", pretty much gives it away. The title supposes that you will buy a boat. Maybe that's the most common outcome, but I think it would be helpful to give people the reasons and information to think about the alternatives. (Maybe I think that because we have not bought one as of today?)

Spurr (2004) goes into more detail than Gustafson (1991) about what to look for in a boat, the different styles and the effect of age. That is very informative and means that you can read more details about these subjects later but you will have some basic information from reading this one book.

That said, I have to wonder about some of the chapters. One chapter is titled "How Do I Get Back to the Dock?". Take my advice: If you don't know how to get back to the dock, do not buy a boat! Or at least not a boat that costs more than what seems like a trivial amount to you. (In my case, that would be a few hundred dollars.) Know a lot more than how to get back to the dock before you buy a boat that cost tens of thousands of dollars. You may find going back to the dock so intimidating and difficult that you don't ever want to do it again. Probably not, but you never know until you try it.

There are other chapters on topics such as how to raise the sails. These chapters also are not very helpful for buying a boat.

A very good part of the book is Spurr's summary of 75 different boats' qualities. Spurr is a very knowledgeable sailor and his knowledge shines through in this section of the book. The boats range from eight-foot boats big enough for one person to catamarans big enough for a large family. Or put differently, they range from boats that should never go much beyond shouting distance of shore to boats that have gone around the world. Overall, this is an excellent first book on buying a boat. And the relatively low price doesn't hurt.

what will you do with a sailboat?

There are roughly four types of sailing: daysailing; coastal cruising; offshore cruising; and racing. Daysailing is just that: sailing for the day and going home. Coastal cruising is traveling on the boat, possibly long distances, but not more than a few hours from some safe port or anchorage. Offshore cruising is sailing well away from shore for extended periods.

From what I can tell, you will not learn about racing by reading books. You want to start by racing on someone else's boat.

There are books about sailboats in general including setting them up and books about collections of specific sailboats. Books about sailboats in general discuss the usefulness of various characteristics and any disadvantages. They are useful reading unless you plan on buying a boat other than a relatively simple daysailor, in which case the short summaries in Spurr's book Your First Sailboat probably are more than adequate.

If you plan on buying a boat twenty feet or longer or you plan on sailing it overnight, you will benefit from reading at least a little about sailboats in general. Besides, you might find the books interesting reading. After you've learned about the characteristics of boats in general, comparisons of specific sailboats will be a lot more informative.

sailboats in general

Much of the focus of available books is on offshore cruising. Possibly this is because authors tend to be offshore cruisers. Writing books is one way to earn money to pay for extended trips. Possibly more books on offshore cruising are sold because of demand. It is more fun to imagine sailing in Tonga than in Charleston Harbor. Whatever the reason, it's a problem if you're not sure what you want to do in your boat.

Herb Payson (1997) and Jim Howard (2000) are books about equipment and organization for offshore cruising. If you think that you might be interested in offshore cruising in the boat that you will buy, they will be helpful. Payson's book is the more entertaining of the two. It is hard not to like a title like Advice for the Sealorn. Payson uses a question-and-answer format for topics and uses stories to make his points. If you are sure that you will only daysail, neither book has much to help you choose your boat.

If you think that you might do some coastal cruising, then both Payson (1997) and Howard (2000) will be somewhat helpful. If you are coastal cruising instead of cruising offshore, you won't have to worry about your children's schooling, which you would if you spent a couple of years in the South Pacific. That difference is obvious. Less obvious are some of the equipment differences. That said, it is hard to find sensible discussions of boats for coastal cruising.

The single best book on the overall question of buying and outfitting a boat for cruising is Beth Leonard's The Voyager's Handbook: The Essential Guide to Bluewater Cruising (2007). Besides offshore cruising, the book is quite helpful for coastal cruising, or just sailing around San Francisco Bay or Charleston harbor in a boat that's 30 feet long or more. This is the second edition. The first is available used. I have read both.

I strongly recommend buying the new edition. The first edition was very good, but it was like a lot of other such books. It had a fair amount of general information and was interesting. It lacked specifics.

This edition is an impressive book packed with a lot of highly specific information and pictures. To give you an idea, she talks about alternative ways to set up anchors. She talks about keeping the deck clear so that you can walk to the bow without tripping on stays. Even if you have no intention of spending more than a week on your boat or ever being out of sight of land, these discussions will give you things to think about when you're looking at boats. You might think of them on your own. Then again, you might not.

She talks about what people commonly do when they are out cruising and how much money they spend. And she doesn't guess. She actually asked people, enough of them to get a good general idea.

Besides all this, she uses three families as examples of what it costs to go cruising, either spending extremely little, a moderate amount and a lot. Even if you are not going bluewater cruising, these examples will give you a good idea of the cost of different ways of setting up your boat. This can give you ideas about what equipment is realistic and what isn't.

The cover of Nigel Calder's book (2001) claims that it is “the essential guide for choosing, equipping and sailing coastal or offshore cruising boats.” The book is strongest on offshore cruising boats. I think that it is less helpful for coastal cruising, where the requirements are not so demanding or expensive. Calder took delivery of a Pacific Seacraft a short while before writing this book; much of the book uses his choices as a benchmark for a solid cruising boat. For offshore cruising, I think that it is a fair benchmark. For daysailing and some coastal cruising, it is not necessary to have such a heavy and expensive boat and not even necessarily desirable.

From Calder's book, you might get the idea that offshore cruising is quite expensive. Offshore cruising need not be expensive if you are willing to forego some conveniences. There are limits though. As Calder points out, his family and many others are not willing to wash dishes in sea water to conserve on fresh water. (I know that my wife wouldn't!)

I have to add that I liked reading Calder's discussion of features and he is mechanically and electrically adept. You want to be aware, though, that his focus is on offshore cruising, not coastal cruising.

The title of John Vigor's Seaworthy Offshore Sailboat (2001) suggests it is another book on offshore cruising only.

There are a lot of comparisons to coastal cruising and daysailing boats though. This book is very helpful for understanding the advantages and disadvantages of various configurations and dimensions. For example, he discusses widths and lengths of bunks in about a page of text (pp. 140-41).

The title of Roger Marshall's book (1999), Choosing A Cruising Sailboat, indicates that it is about choosing cruising sailboats. After seeing other titles, you might suspect that the book really is about offshore cruising. No. On the contrary, I think that the book is quite helpful for deciding on characteristics of daysailers as well as coastal cruisers.

How does Marshall cram all this in 210 pages including numerous figures? Marshall compares the designs of five different boats: a weekender; a cruiser; a voyager; a single-hander; and a cruiser-racer. All of these boats would be relatively expensive, but that is irrelevant. The comparisons of features among the boats gives you serious food for thought about what features are important for what type of sailing. Then you can start thinking about how much inconvenience or how much complication you are willing to deal with.

specific sailboats

Ferenc Máté (1982, n.d, 2003) has three books that survey the features of various boats. On one level, these are great books. The photographs of the boats are stunning; the descriptions of the boat's features are clear and understandable; and Máté clearly loves sailboats.

Máté's Best Boats to Build and Buy (1982) is a little dated. Apparently there were many people who built their own boats, or at least started to build a boat, when Máté wrote the book in 1982. There is not much evidence of people building their own sailboats today. Some of the features that Máté decries, such as hull liners, are just as problematic today as when he first wrote but are ubiquitous on inexpensive and even expensive boats. The emphasis in this book is more on boats that are suitable for offshore cruising than for coastal cruising or sailing on a nearby lake.

Máté (n.d.) is the best book by him reviewed here. This survey of The World's Best Sailboats even includes Beneteau, one of the big three sailboat manufacturers in the United States today. (Dare we say "manufacturer" instead of "shipbuilder"?)

Máté's The World's Best Sailboats, Volume 2 (2003) seemed a little repetitious to me. In some ways, the book is no more than an update of the earlier survey in The World's Best Sailboats.

My rank ordering of these three books by Máté is: 1. The World's Best Sailboats: A Survey (Máté n.d.); 2. Best Boats to Build and Buy (Máté 1982); and 3. The World's Best Sailboats: Volume II (Máté 2003). I am glad that I own all of them. You may not want to buy all three. It is a little expensive.

It is impossible for me to think of Máté and not think of the Seven Seas calendars. This is only the most recent of many. I have been buying them for several years now and even bought a couple of old ones for the pictures. In fact, my oldest son framed some (you might say "many" since there are about twelve) pictures and they are hanging on my office wall. They are gorgeous pictures. The calendar also includes maps of the areas where the pictures were taken. These pictures don't have much to do with buying a boat, but they are impossible to resist if you like sailboats and the ocean!

On a totally different note, John Vigor (1999) discusses a selection of the older and therefore less expensive boats that can be safely taken on offshore cruises. The boats are 20 to 32 feet long and are available in the United States for several thousand dollars to $50,000. Vigor discusses twenty such boats. Each of the boats has been sailed around the world. There are informative drawings of the boats although no photographs. The book is quite short – 131 pages – although the print is not large type and the material is pointed and informative and the book is relatively inexpensive.

If you are thinking about buying a Pearson sailboat from the 1970s, you want to read the discussion of this and similar boats in Vigor's book. Even though I am not planning on offshore cruising in the near future, I learned quite a bit reading the discussions of boats' features and the tradeoffs. I also enjoyed them; the book is nicely done. I'll know a lot more about some of the other boats in the marina because of this book, and I know more now about some boats for sale at the marina.

Practical Boat Buying (2003) is a collection of reviews from Practical Sailor. The reviews cover boats from 20 feet to 64 feet, although all but four of the boats are less than 50 feet long. The reviews are from different dates, and I can't figure out when they were written. In some cases, the price information has been updated, which eliminates a clue to when the articles were written. That's not a complaint. The updated price information makes the articles more informative than they would be otherwise.

I think that Practical Boat Buying (2003) has no substitute on the bookshelf. It gave me a clear idea of various boats' features and their advantages and disadvantages. I cannot use them uncritically. I went to the Charleston Boat Show to look at a Catalina reviewed by Practical Sailor and discovered their evaluation of the accommodations and mine were quite different. Still, I know of nowhere else that you can get such wide ranging, detailed reviews of boats from 20 to 50 feet.

I strongly suggest that you check the pricing and availability of the two volumes from Practical Sailor's website besides looking at amazon.com. In early March 2008, Amazon had only used copies and three of the four used copies had higher prices than a new copy from Practical Sailor. (Go figure.)

examining and surveying boats

Buying a used boat has similarities to buying a used car. Some used boats are in very good shape, some are in terrible shape, and age takes its toll in all cases. I hasten to add that sailboats fortunately can last in serviceable shape far longer than cars.

If you are spending more than a few thousand dollars, you will want to have the boat surveyed before buying it. A boat survey is similar to a house inspection, just more expensive. As a result, you want to learn to spot the more obvious problems and avoid the expense of a survey which the boat will fail.

Mustin (1994) goes into substantial detail about fiberglass sailboat construction and what can go wrong. The information is very helpful because you will find many other books that discuss boat construction and don't provide enough information to really follow the discussion.

For example, Mustin explains how fiberglass is laid up. He explains how problems arise in the process and how to look for the ill effects of problematic construction.

This could get extremely technical, but Mustin's clear explanations didn't surpass my limited knowledge of chemistry or physics and probably won't overwhelm you either.

Mustin's (1994) book also is helpful for comparing sailboats. He explains alternative ways of putting sailboats together and their implications. When these differences show up on specific sailboats, you will have the background from Mustin (1984) to understand the effects on the boats.

Casey (1997) discusses what can go structurally wrong with sailboats and how you can tell. Drawings illustrate every short paragraph in the book. By the time you're done reading the first 120 pages, you wonder “How in the world will I ever remember all this?” Then you find out how.

A little over ten pages is devoted to what to examine in a 30-minute survey of a boat. This survey repeats selected points from the text. I at least have a chance of remembering them because they were the most important points of the original 120 pages. This is great reinforcement. And it's easy to take copies of ten pages with you or make a checklist so you don't forget something.

This is a great book. It makes me feel like I have a shot at finding problems. Nigel Calder's Cruising Handbook (2001) has a 15-page checklist in small type on big pages. Even he (p. 258) says “To go through this entire questionnaire relative to any boat could easily take days (maybe weeks)!” That's not terribly helpful. It's impossible for me to imagine having the time to spend days looking at each of several boats!

Casey's list, on the other hand, is practical and focuses on basic issues affecting used fiberglass sailboats. After having read the book, you remember it pretty well. Then, after having done the tests on a few boats, it doesn't take much more than 30 minutes to examine all the basics.