Thanks for your correspondence and kind words, Emily.

Your questions are ones that are asked of us often, and I will add excerpts of our correspondence to our website.  We've had so many emails like yours and I usually answer privately when I can, however your email prompted me to finally get this up on our site.  Thank you!  As I surely should have done this long ago!  My reply is general and not directed to anyone in particular, it's just an open page of my thoughts on how we got from land to sea and the rationale that allowed us to do it. 

The audience just loves hearing simple philosophy.

Well, maybe not that strenuous!

Bill wouldn't look at a vessel unless it was at least 50 feet.  Uh huh.  I decided that 50 feet is a lot of boat with a lot of potential maintenance issues.  More and more I would read of others who made the decision before us, and why they chose the smallest vessel that could suit their needs instead of a larger one.  Everything on a boat grows exponentially as the length grows... a 32 foot sailboat is not a 36 foot sailboat with 4 feet chopped off of it.  Everything is smaller.  The beam (width), the freeboard (the height from the waterline {where the boat's side meets the water} to the deck), etc.  Everything you can imagine gets much much larger as the length of the boat increases.  A 40 foot boat's roominess inside and out is about 50% larger than a 36 foot boat, even though only 4 feet separates their lengths.  It didn't take long before Bill understood these facts.  We looked at 50 foot boats that were so cut up there was hardly any room at all.  Lots of rooms... but no room!  We settled upon the Lancer 36 because she was the only monohull in her class with an open layout.  Even though she was 36 feet, her salon and living area was much larger and more accessible than the other larger boats we viewed.  My advice will always be to purchase the smallest boat in which you can be comfortable. It will be easier to maintain and far less costly than its bigger cousins.

Once you learn how a sail boat moves with air you'll get the hang of it.  What makes it go and what makes it founder.  It all makes perfect sense.  So you quickly learn before ever stepping aboard: AVOID BAD WEATHER LIKE THE PLAQUE.  No good sailor worth her salt would ever put her crew in harm's way because she didn't what the weather was doing.  I would never leave port with winds in excess of 20 knots without knowing I've just seen the radar and it will be over in two seconds.  It's just not worth the risk that the day will get worse.  Leave port in bad conditions and suddenly the conditions can be far worse than ever imagined.  The weather can take you by surprise if you are not inclined to learn how to read clouds and weather.  Radar helps a lot, but your instincts will help you more once you've learned some basic do's and don'ts.  The weather adages of old will help you on  your way: "Red sky at night, sailors' delight."  Meaning a red sky at night means the next day's weather will be beautiful.  However, "Red sky at morning, sailors take warning."  I'm sure you understand that second one.  Learn the weather proverbs and it will truly help you keep safe.  It's an easy way to begin to learn how to read weather.

We would only use the jib (foresail) until we learned how the boat would react and what her strengths and weaknesses were...   then we'd work our way up to using the mainsail alone... then ultimately combining the jib and the mainsail for optimal performance... and by that time we were ready!  I will add that long before we ever purchased our vessel, we learned to read charts!  It is imperative one knows how to read charts.  We draw 5'8 and live in the Keys... which is no doubt a testament to the fact that we know our charts!  It's very shallow waters down here... and we love it.  I've heard it said many, many times: "If you can learn to navigate the shallow waters of the Keys and the Bahamas... you can sail anywhere in the world!"  I believe it.

Many down here in the Keys (and elsewhere) don't sail at night because they're afraid of a crab pot fouling their prop.  We put "Spurs" on our prop shaft and haven't had a problem with a crab pot since.  No more dodging them.  Most of the time they move out of the way on their own.  When they don't, the Spurs make sure the prop isn't fouled.  We logged 96 overnight hours in a three-week period and not one problem, even though we were in Crab Pot Central.  Spurs have been used for over 25 years and are on installed on USCG, US Navy, Canadian CG, RNLI (English CG) and thousands of pleasure and commercial vessels worldwide (including s/v September Sea).  Thank you, Spurs Linecutters, because with a Spurs Linecutter installed on your boat your crab pot worries are over!

Happy Thanksgiving! 

What we were most surprised by is that we started having second thoughts about catamarans while and after living onboard one.  We loved the boat, and the privacy of having a full hull to ourselves (and our captain in the other) was nice, but the sailing to weather wasn't very good, the "hobby horse" motion in weather was a challenge (and, had we been outside of the protected waters of the ICW, we would have been subject to more "bow slap"), and the boat was so wide that visibility was a challenge.  Sailing downwind was a pure pleasure, but there was enough that we weren't sold on about the boat that we are rethinking monohulls for a variety of reasons.   To get the space and storage we would need in a cat, we'd have to "go big" (and expensive!), as the smaller cats have narrower hulls and thus much more cramped sleeping quarters, and the second hull would be virtually wasted since it's just the two of us.