Considering Aluminum

While perusing the various online classifieds, a daily ritual for me, I recently happened across an add for a 38' sailboat. An older and smaller design then I would hope to eventually upgrade to, but two items caught my attention and quickly turned my casual perusing to semi-obsessive contemplation. My first pause came as I read that this was a swing keel boat - a dream come true for for my local cruising grounds. This would open up nearby waters that, with my previous 5-6' draft vessels, I'd never before even thought about traversing in a vessel of that size. The second item, though, is what really drew me in - the hull material: Aluminum...very interesting...

Throughout my lifelong obsession with sailboats, I've considered various marine building materials: fiberglass, steel, wood, and ferro-cement. I've poked holes in various alternative materials such as ferra-lite and ironed Dacron. I've even played with laughable ideas such as stacked/carved hardware store foam or paper-mache! Yes, I was as much an 'armchair boatbuilder' as I was a sailor. Throughout my 40 years, dreams of boat-building have been repeatedly and unfailingly re-ignited during times in which I was landlocked. Times when my boat had to be sold for the move, vehicle, medical, child, or whatever the next necessary expense was. In fairness to my patient wife and placating family, I've never made enough extra money to truly justify owning a boat. Not even a day-sailor, let alone the mono-hull cruising sailboat which was, for me, the creme de la crem of boats. This financial dilemma is probably whey every time I parted with a vessel, the insurmountably of acquiring another immediately drove me to the flighty idea of building a boat - my perfect boat. I was also determined to build this boat as cheap as possible! All though I long ago decided aluminum would be an almost ideal material for a sailboat, all of my armchair boat building never led me very far down that path. The simple reason for this was cost.

Now, a middle aged sailor with a wife and 5 kids, cost is as big an issue as it ever was. Although, I find myself less inclined to strive for (and less of a believer that there actually is) my one perfect boat, there often do seem to be perfect opportunities for a boat . Here is a boat, already built, possibly large enough for us to take some extended cruises on, that could be had for about what I could sell my project of a boat for. That sounds like a good definition of perfect at this point in my life! Time to re-open the book on Aluminum...