The Best Sailboat for Solo Sailing the Caribbean - Ep 219 - Lady K Sailing

This episode is brought to you by Scott and Adam, this week's newest patrons. Thank you. You guys asked for it and here it is. We did the best cruising boat for couples and the single amongst you guys wanted an episode just for you. The solo sailor, well, whether it's a bachelor or a bachelorette or the person who just wants to explore the world on their own terms, maybe without another pesky human being being on board. We are of course going to be looking at some pretty cool boats today and discussing what we want in a boat that we're going to be all alone on and stay tuned to the end because I found exactly the one that I would buy, probably for all the wrong reasons, if I were about to head off into the great blue yonder all by my lonesome. This week on Everything You Need to Know, the best sailboat for the solo cruiser. Guys, thank you so much for all the likes and subscribes and the ideas for new episodes that you leave down in the comments. The sailing community is the most awesome community on YouTube. This episode was asked for, no, demanded by people in the comments, sailors. So here it is and I always say the number one rule in sailing is keep the water out of the boat. That seems pretty obvious. But the number two rule applies to the solo sailor even more than anything else. Rule number two, keep the people in the boat. The single most terrifying thing that can happen to the solo sailor is falling out of the boat because of course there's no one to stop the boat, to douse the sail, start the engine, turn around and come pick your clumsy butt up after you fall in the water. As such, we need a boat that by its very nature is hard to fall out of. But more than that, because we will be alone on the boat, we need a boat that's more than just comfortable and safe and an easy way to travel. It needs to sort of become a member of the crew. It also can't be very big. We need a single hand in this thing and of course we'll be living on it alone so it really doesn't need to be very big. Probably 34 to 38 feet would be the sweet spot for us. And given that smaller size than probably normal, we want a very, very heavy girl because we don't want her bouncing and bucking us off into the water. Let's say 13,000 pounds minimum. And by the time we weigh it down it'll probably be closer to 15,000 pounds. And we'll of course be installing jack lines that we're going to use almost 100% of the time. Jack lines are lines that run from the back to the front and they're so that you can actually clip onto them with your harness and you'll probably be wearing a harness most of the time. We'll also be insisting on or installing aftermarket a hydraulic autopilot because believe me you will not be solo sailing without a solid first mate and that first mate's name is always the autopilot or some kind of self-steering. And we won't be bothering with some cheapo wheel pilot either. And on that note, we'll also be using dinghy dabbits because believe me it is a huge, huge pain to try to hoist that rib up onto the deck with the spinnaker halyard all by your lonesome. It can be done, but you don't want to do it. Lastly, we'll be wanting an electric windlass with an anchor that actually slots very easily into the bow roller because the last thing you need to be doing is hoisting the anchor when it's a good blow in the anchorage and you're just trying to get out of there and having to fight with the anchor to get up onto the roller while the boat sort of takes off downwind toward all the other boats that you're anchored with or toward a bridge or toward the rocks. In a perfect world, an electric windlass with a remote would be ideal. Also and here's something that we need to talk about that you may not have thought of. You need somewhere to go pee and I'm not kidding, I'm not trying to make a joke. Imagine you're motoring along somewhere, you're behind the helm and you just can't stop because you're in the ICW or the Erie Canal. If you stop the boat, it's going to drift into either one of the walls or the rocks or somebody else and you can't really trust the autopilot because the Erie Canal and the ICW are kind of bendy. You don't have enough time to run inside. What do you do? This is usually addressed with either peeing over the back if you're a guy, peeing in one of the scuppers or having a bucket in the cockpit. And I'm sorry, but this is just true. So with our criteria all laid out, there are a few boats that I found that would suit the need. And mind you, as this is like a solo goal, we can actually keep it kind of cheap. I'll be doing another episode pretty soon on the cheapest solo sailboats for cruisers so subscribe to the channel if you want to see that later. The first boat we're going to look at today is the lightest of the bunch but it packs a lot into just a 36 foot hull and it's a proven island hopper. This is a Catalina 36, the Mark 2. This one is in Cali but this is a very popular boat. You'll find this thing everywhere. They're asking 67 grand for this one which is about on point for a nice one of these. The first thing that draws me to this boat is the relatively large bow rail to help stabilize us when we are up dealing with that anchor. And the aft end, we get even more stainless. We get a big stern pulpit and on this boat the cockpit's enclosed which added even more stainless to sort of keep us from falling out of that cockpit. Out back we also get the dinghy davits that we know we're going to need for the rib and of course we get a nice sugar scoop. And this is more than just the ease of snorkeling in the gin clear waters in the Bahamas. The sugar scoop is a huge thing when it comes to unloading the dinghy after a grocery trip or going to get fuel or water. You won't have someone else up on the boat reaching down to grab those things from you when you're trying to get them out of the dinghy. So having easy access like this is a game changer for the solo sailor. Up on deck we get a few things that I really like. The shrouds are actually inboard which keeps the walkway clear and it's all fairly clean out here. The layout's really good. We get wide side decks so you're not going to be tripping over everything and in true Catalina style we get lots of opening hatches to keep the air flowing inside the boat. We also get a fairly good sized cockpit so we'll be comfortable on our passages with room to entertain guests if we want to when we get to the anchorage for the night. And we get all the displays and controls right at the helm where you're going to need them. The layout inside this boat too is excellent for the solo sailor with tons of room and your choice of three very comfortable places to sleep. One of them is even an aft cabin which is pretty awesome for a 36 footer. We also get very plush and comfy looking upholstery everywhere that looks to be in really good shape for the age of this boat. We get the huge C shaped settee but also a pair of chairs with a table opposite of that and a dedicated nab desk that I'm sure would double as probably your kitchen table if you're eating alone all the time because we don't need a lot of seating to have a meal. With the main settee folded down we get a huge massive daybed and I suspect I would just leave it folded down like this most of the time if I'm the only one on the boat. It's a great spot to hang out and watch a movie and I might even just sleep right here mid ship where it's the most comfortable. We get a typical size galley for this size of boat too with everything we'd need although I'd probably change out that double sink to a big single so that my dinner plates actually fit in it. And since I'm sailing solo I'll be able to leave dirty dishes in there even longer because nobody's around to complain. Of course we get that aft cockpit on this boat that would be way more than I need. It's huge but I'll take it. And we get a V berth for guests or more likely storage of the extra sails and things like that. I think I'm still partial to this huge mid ship daybed myself. That's probably where I would sleep. Outside of course everything is already lead aft and we even get a pair of big self tailors on the coach top which is actually really important. My coach top winches are not self tailing and it makes sailing solo a little bit more difficult. You have to leave the wheel to adjust the main trim and then fight to get it cleated before the boat blows off course. I love self tailors up here it's a really cool addition to this boat. The engine on this boat is also very easy to access for maintenance which is a big plus even if you're not sailing alone. By all measures this is just a very nice capable island hopper that's small enough that you can go and single hand it in just about any situation but it doesn't skimp on comfort. Our next boat today is a little bit less production than that Catalina and a little bit more ocean going but a little older and quite a bit cheaper. And it has one important characteristic that for our solo needs makes a lot of sense. This is a center cockpit. This 15,000 pounds of handsome boat is a westerly Corsair 36 so it's still small enough for our needs but much much heavier. We do lose the sugar scoop which kinda sucks but we gain the center cockpit design so we get the high walled space to keep us safe when the going gets rough which is for if you remember rule number two keep the people in the boat. We do lose a little bit of the side deck space with this design but everything is always a compromise and this one they're only asking 46 grand and it's already got a life raft on it so the cruising setup is sort of already started so hopefully you'll never need that life raft. The added safety of a center cockpit should not be understated. If you wrap it in a full enclosure you get a very safe and comfortable place to helm the boat even in the worst of the weather that you'll ever want to be out in. And staying warm and dry is actually a safety thing. If you're warm and dry you're paying more attention and you're going to do a better job. Inside this westerly 36 we get the typical 70's or 80's boat cabin it's not all that thrilling it's got a bench on either side one has a lee thing built in for sleeping on passage which you're not going to be doing because you're all by yourself. We get a tight galley and of course we get a v-berth but also remember we get a reasonable aft cabin with this boat that you're going to call home at night. And while I'm not the biggest fan of this boat I am a fan of what it represents. It is a fairly heavy boat for its size it's a coastal cruiser but it's cheap enough that you can get into one if you're a bit younger or with less financial risk and you can make sure all of its systems are up to snuff and just go and use it. It's cheap it's easy and these have already been all over the Caribbean. Lady Kay Sailing is brought to you by patrons people who give a couple of bucks an episode to make these videos possible. A big shout out to all the existing patrons that have gotten us this far if you get some value from these videos or you want to help out please consider becoming a patron. Next up we're going to spend a bit more money here but for that we're going to get a lot more boat. We're getting into the sort of semi luxury solo cruisers with this thing and this isn't your granddaddy's Beneteau because this is the CC variant and these were built to go to the Caribbean. For just shy of $100,000 this is a 2002 Beneteau America 36CC the CC standing for of course center cockpit again. We talked about why that's a good thing for a solo cruiser and this Benny for $99,000 gives the term clean a whole new meaning. This is the cleanest Benny I have ever seen and I mean inside and out right down to the sails. It looks like it's just been painted or at least professionally detailed. If half as much care has been put into maintenance on this boat we have ourselves one heck of a good value here. On the outside of course we're getting a center cockpit but this time we get a sugar scoop for that unloading of the dinghy. We get a traditional sloop rig to keep things very tidy and very simple which we like and we get an in-mast furling for kind of a bonus. I've been asked how I feel about in-mast furlings and most notably they do have a bad rep but that bad rep is kind of aged at this point. If you asked me in the mid 90's it'd be a hard pass on an in-mast furling for the main. I'm not interested because they had a reputation to jam. That was the fear with the mainsail would jam fully deployed and you could get yourself into trouble. But the newer systems I haven't heard of this happening in years. I think the fear people have in-mast furlings is something we've simply moved past because of the quality of the hardware. Now while this boat may seem like a total steal for less than a hundred grand we should note that there are no dinghy davits not even a dodger so we're going to need to set aside some extra cash to fix those problems. The cockpit is about standard for a center cockpit which of course means it's a little small but it's safe and it's cozy for the solo sailor. What I can appreciate however on this boat is how incredibly tidy the deck is. There's very little in the way of lines and clutter to trip over. It's very clean. We also get a big fancy chart plotter on this boat that's been installed which makes a really great place to mount the iPad that we're probably going to use instead. Inside you better like stripes because it's basically Tigger's bedroom. The stripedy one. Stripes on the cushions. Stripes on the backrest. There's stripes on the ceiling. But more of that super clean theme in here. It's actually very beautiful and it makes my OCD a little bit happy somehow. We get the typical v-berth with room for the guests if we have some and a blank slate in here to add things to decorate as needed. We get a nav station but albeit with no chair. And we get a galley down the hall like a normal galley on our way to the aft cabin. Out back, this big bedroom and a very interesting layout. We get a full bed but it has sort of a couch shape extended off the bed and opposite the bed we get somewhere for a TV and if it's me, likely an Xbox and maybe a Bluetooth speaker for my music. And we get access to the head on the other side. This is one heck of a clean and ready to customize boat and there's a lot to love about it despite it needing a lot of money invested to outfit it for whatever type of cruising that we plan to take it on. Before we look at this last boat, the one I would buy, I get asked a lot for help from people that are boat shopping right now. So I dedicated a page over at LadyKSailing.com where you can go and book an hour of my time should you need it. It's LadyKSailing.com forward slash consults. Okay, this last boat today and maybe this only appeals to me but it's specifically me because if I were solo sailing, this my friends is the bachelor pad and it's set up exactly the way I suspect most single guys would set it up. Hate it or love it, this is the man cave. This is a Morgan 38CC. You might be seeing a theme here at this point with center cockpits but again, for good reason. If you're by yourself, you don't want to fall out. This is a 38 foot Brut coming in at a whopping 20,000 pounds. If we're trying to find the heaviest 30 something footer, I think we just found it and it's much better than anything else we looked at in that regard and it meets all of the needs on the top side. We get a nice clean wide deck and a very tidy layout of all the lines and rigging. The cockpit size is always the sacrifice with these boats but we have a safe place to helm with enough room to be comfortable if we're solo sailing this boat and we get all the lines lead aft and neatly stored on the coach top with clutches. It looks great. Out back we also get a sugar scoop that we really like. It's another win for this boat and well, it's not as clean as that Beneteau was, it is pretty darn close to it and there's a giant hatch on the back of this boat. More on that hatch later. Inside this boat is where it becomes the ultimate man cave or lady cave if that's what suits you. The main saloon is adorned with this luxury plush upholstery and a huge TV and it's basically one brass pole short of any gentleman's club. We even get a dedicated gaming or sorry, nav desk with a proper chair. How many boats do you get a proper chair? Work from home? No problem. Opposite, we get a galley shaped galley that we love about these center cockpits leading back to the private owner's stateroom and just in case the private owner's stateroom was a little too boring, there's that big window that we saw earlier. You get a proper view of all the beautiful places you're going to be taking this very, very capable ocean boat. Even the head is a bit big too. It looks awesome. I think what sells me on this boat is this picture. It's basically exactly how I want my condo or sorry, sailboat to be while I'm at anchor. It's plush, it's classy and very close to the film set for some kind of spicy movie. Now I joke about this boat, but all in, center cockpit, full on Caribbean cruiser that just happens to be very well equipped. If you like this channel, please don't forget to give the video a thumbs up and subscribe. If you would, it's free for you and it would really mean the world to me. That's it for this week guys. If you want to continue the conversation, we've got a great community going over on the Lady K Discord server. I'll leave a link in the description if you want to come chat. We just talk about boats all day. Until next time, keep the heavy side down, but not too far down.