She (all sailors says "she") will be our home for 12 months, so
we better not to make a too big mistake. In fact it is much, much more than an
accomodation, it is as well our vehicule, office, playground.... and shelter. It is the first
time I have to choose a yacht and need to get some advices from knowledgeable
person. At this time we were in progress to get our
Coastal skipper certificate and I required some help from our instructor. In
addition, my wife
tought (she is a teacher) to students living on a cruising yacht and eventually we met their
father, Jean.
Jean is a lifetime experienced sailor, everywhere around the world with
his family. He owned several yachts before he bought "Nagual" a steel
sloop where he currently spend his life. They
arrived from Alaska in 2007 and settled for one year in Sydney before heading to New
Caledonia mid 2008. Jean left New-Caledonia early November 2009 and reached
Chile 46 days later. His children approaching teenage, he is now sailing solo most of
the time when crossing ocean. He is safety oriented and has always in mind the
long term and worst case scenario when choosing an equipment for his boat.
He was our backbone for yacht inspection and helped a lot choosing "Zafarse".
There are so many on the market that if you have no precise criteria to
start with, you can spend months looking at adds from everywhere around the
world. One trend, Australia is one of the most expensive place to buy a yacht...
I cannot explain why, maybe because it is so far away from all country
manufacturing yacht (except NZ) that fees for importing (tax and chartering) the
yacht are dissuassive.
Of course many parameter have to be considered such as the latitude you want to
go, how long you to keep the yacht, how many people will live aboard, their age
and ability to help...
In our case, it is a 1 year project, in the 15 to 35 degree latitude South (warm/hot
weather), 4 people aboard with two children.
So our main criteria were:
- short handling possible => 2 people - 11 to 13 meters
- marketable after a couple of years => 2 to 3 years, no steel or custom
- big enough to accomodate the family during a year => 2+2 and up to 8
occasionnaly - 11 to 15 meters
- good quality to avoid too many trouble during the trip => Shipyard reknown
for quality
- Good seaworthyness to forgive our lack of experience => deep keel, no
racing boat
- fitting our budget for purchase and upgrade/maintenance => with most
cruising equipement fitted
Then, the number drops drastically and the choice becomes
possible.
Below are the yacht selected
Custom 47': beautiful yacht. The design is more racing oriented and the equipment for cruising need an expensive upgrade and time to do it. internal layout is not convenient for a family.
Elan 43': Good quality racing yacht. Too difficult and expensive to upgrade for cruising.
Holland 46': a bit too big for short handling and needs upgrade for off-shore cruising.
Maracuja 42': Too expensive and located in French Polynesia. Very good design and quality yacht for long term cruising and living aboard..
Norseman 447: Went back in the USA when we investigated this yacht.
Oceanis 411: well equiped for cruising (except radar), attractive deal but the quality is not very good and we do not like very much the layout. Another major inconvenient was seaworthiness due to short keel.
Baltic 42DP: Zafarse is a sloop build by the Batlic Yachts shipyard in Finland. Baltic is building high quality yacht since 1973. Today they build only very high standard customs sailing yacht from 56 to 200 feet, the design is still the same with a double cockpit which is especially adapted with kids on board (they stay in the first cockpit protected from wind and sea). Zafarse is the last of a serie of 29 and was exported to the US for her first customer in late 1984. The hull is composite GRP/Balsa/GRP, teak deck and aluminium mast with rod standing rigging. Originaly used as racing yacht she was converted by the second owner from 2006 for cruising the US west coast and the Pacific ocean crossing. Equiped with radar, wind vane as well as auto-pilot, watermaker and portable 1 KW genset. The main upgrade I wished was to add an inner stay to be able to rig a storm jib and replace the windlass.
The layout fitted a family for cruising and passage. With a cosy aft cabin, a big V berth forward to store anything you want during passage and confortable enough to accomodate our two kids. 4 berths in the central area were the kids live during the passages and the family when moored. All facilities you can expect from a modern cruising yacht. All material used been good quality, everything was in same or better condition than the yacht much younger we visited.