$1,995
Long Beach, California
Category
-
Length
23.0
Posted Over 1 Month
PRICE REDUCED! At this price, this boat is a steal. If you had this trailer made now, it alone would sell for over $2000. I know it's a buyer's market for boats, but this boat is very rare to find at all, let alone in overall good, complete condition of this one. She just needs a couple of weekends of TLC and you could take her sailing! The boat is currently lying in Southern California. Registration in California for both trailer and boat are up-to-date. I have not sailed her in many years, but she has been sitting quietly under a good cover, waiting for more fun. And fun this boat is. Let me just say, one of my favorite memories of the many I have sailing this boat, is of a Fall day in the early 1990s on Lake Erie, just off-shore from down-town Cleveland. We had five adults aboard, it was 55 degrees with sun and clouds and a 15-20 knot breeze. The four crew and skipper found the port-and-starboard hiking straps very handy that day. I can see us now, all hiked out over the windward side, flying westward along the shore, blasting along on a broad reach under a steady northerly. Had we flipped her it would have been a cold 15 minutes, but this crew was fairly expert and sitting back aft, tiller extension in hand, I could not help the exhilarating feeling that we were about to become airborne. I've had some inquiries about the minimum space required to store the boat, its minimum footprint, in other words. Conservatively, I'd say you need at least 26.5 feet long and 6.5 to 7 feet wide to store the boat and move around it comfortably.. I built this little bald-headed schooner to a high quality standard in 1988-1990. Phil Bolger designed the boat for protected and semi-protected waters as a daysailer and rough-and-ready overnighter. She is featured in Dynamite Payson's original book on Instant Boatbuilding. Although, I can tell you that this boat was hardly instant! Note well: the boat and trailer include everything you need to go sailing. Nothing is missing. She draws about 3 feet with the daggerboard down. About 9 inches with the daggerboard up. I should also note that this boat is not a toy. She was made to be driven hard. She was created by one of the most talented boat designers of the 20th century and she sails beautifully on all points, with light weather helm to windward, and a very balanced helm downwind. The boat is built of mahogany doorskin quarter-inch plywood for deck and hull-sides. Half-inch out-door plywood for the bottom. I carefully inspected all panels for voids and flaws. Structural members consist of various appropriate soft- and hard-woods. The bowsprit and mid-ship stiffener on deck are of solid apatong. Booms and gaffs of clear, vertical-grain sitka spruce, custom-ordered from M.L. Condon. Tiller of mahogany. Masts of SPF two-by-fours laminated and hand-planed and sanded to shape. Masts are solid and totally bullet-proof. They have some weight to them, but are, nonetheless, easily stepped without much effort. The boat was built using the original Chem-Tech T-88 structural epoxy glue and Chem-Tech's sealing and laminating resin. Marine bronze anchor-fast nails and bronze screws used where appropriate. The entire boat is sealed in epoxy. The outside of the hull is sheathed in polypropylene cloth set in laminating epoxy, and finished with an epoxy paint no longer made, which has lasted the years quite well. The masts are sealed in epoxy. The booms and gaffs in marine varnish. Deck hardware consists of bronze cleats bolted through the deck and reinforcing stiffeners with stainless bolts. Rigging is best-quality line from West Marine, still in excellent, soft, pliable condition. Sails custom-made by Sail-rite, consisting of mainsail, foresail, flying jib and staysail. Wood-shell blocks are really beautiful and one size larger than necessary for the service, and should last forever. The boat has a motor-well, but I never used it. the boat goes nicely under paddle-power, and comes with four paddles. A little electric or gas engine of 2-5hp would be more than sufficient to power her wherever you want to go. The motor-mount itself is made of laminated apitong and is very robust. I fabricated a simple cover for the motor well, so that water doesn't slop in if you're not using an engine. Note that like many of Bolger's sailboats, this schooner has NO standing rigging. Once I got the hang of it, I could go from arriving at the ramp to sailing in under 45 minutes. And setting up a boat like this is part of the zen-fun of the thing. The boat includes wood brackets to hold masts and rigging inboard for trailering. The retractable daggerboard can be lifted part-way for downwind work (to lessen the chance of a broach), or all the way to beach the boat. The board has about 20 lbs of lead-shot in the bottom, which gives her a bit more stability for windward work. She still needs her crew to keep her right-side up in a breeze of wind, but is perfectly docile in lighter airs with just two aboard. I even single-handed her a few times in light-airs, with the mainsail reefed, and with two people and reefed main she's good in a breeze up to 15 knots, with care. The trailer was custom-made for the boat by Trailex of Canfield of Ohio to a superb quality standard. The trailer is made of extruded aluminum sections bolted together, and any part of it can be easily replaced. The trailer shows some wear and light oxidation from weather and years but everything still works fine, EXCEPT for the lights, which should be completely re-wired, and probably replaced. The buy-it-now price is quite reasonable. The trailer, sails, and all other materials and hardware in a big pile in your driveway would cost much more than my price. If you had her built today to an appropriate level of finish and quality by a skilled builder who understands this kind of thing, you'd easily spend $15-20K. Or more. See "Condition" note above for more details. Please ask any and all questions before purchase. I have described the boat as accurately as possible. I don't want any surprises for the buyer. I would really like to sell the boat to someone who will cherish her, as I did for many years. She needs a bit of TLC right now, but not all that much to go sailing!
