Plastic Classic Forum

I've got an Oday 25 C/B boat to learn Keelboat sailing on and Cruise the Great Lakes. I was just wondering where most people would consider relatively safe to sail one. Someday I'll sail to the Caribbean and maybe farther, so I want to know when I'll have to consider an upgrade. Long way off, I know, but it's good information to have anyways.

I'm not sure I understand the question because my answer is any body of water that can accomodate her draft. But I think you know that already. Congratulations on your indoctrination to boating. My first boat was an Oday Tempest.

Perhaps if you defined 'safe'. Is it safe from tipping over? Running aground? Whatever it is, you'll get through it and be better for it.

Safety, or the lack thereof, comes from the operator of the boat, not the boat.

(At least within the very narrow context of the question as I read it.)

First of all, Welcome to the Forum!

I had refrained from answering because this is such a "big" question, and so hard to answer. You can take the boat anywhere, but it becomes increasingly dependent on the humans aboard (as Tim said), and also increasingly "not what the boat was meant for."

But we all know that people have sailed "wrong" boats all around (or even around) the world, so there is no definitive line. Just shades of a line.

The Great Lakes (unless you are in a really sheltered place) can be every bit as challenging as the ocean, so don't take them too lightly just because they are lakes; conversely, don't think you can't use an O'Day 25 on them at all just because they are the Great Lakes.

Which boat is right for which person, which situation, which body of water, and which weather window is just such a complex question that it is hard to answer properly.

Rachel

Ditto all comments aforesaid. Friend of mine have circumnavigated their Whitby 42, a well thought-of Alberg-designed cruising boat. Despite this boat's obvious and celebrated capabilities, they were extraordinarily careful and mindful of weather windows. Read up on the various cruises made in small craft: Sopranino, by Colin Mudie is a good one; Heavy Weather Sailing is a classic.

Presuming and ensuring a well built boat maintained/restored to retain/regain her good characteristics and a cautious, intelligent, learned crew; dangers will be reduced, perhaps even to an acceptable minimum.

My own prejudice is that the smaller, older O'Days are less able than the later ones. His '80's O'Day 34 looks darned good. Remember George started out in the '50s selling English-built Jollyboat and Flying Dutchman before designing and building his own small stuff, and before working up to cruising boats.

Quetzalsailor wrote:... Whitby 42, a well thought-of Alberg-designed cruising boat.

Ted Brewer.

By means of clarification, though, Whitby was the builder of the Alberg 30.

Thanks, Tim. I understood Whitby and Alberg had some sort of relationship, but I got it wrong. Pretty obvious looking at the boats; Alberg's stuff is always so pretty and the Whitby 42 tends toward the capacious.

Actually, I know two of these able boats: Camryka, now based in Panama and owned by relatives, and Serenade, in which our friends circumnavigated.