Captain Ron's

Sailing and Cruising Pages

Suitable Cruising Boats

By Capt Ron Butler

Lots of my friends ask me “What sailboat would you recommend for cruising the Bahamas?” Or “How big a boat do you need to cruise the Bahamas?”

Having owned many sailboats including both monohulls and catamarans, I definitely have opinions about that subject. But rather than inflict my opinions on you, what follows here, is a somewhat more analytical (hopefully, less subjective) answer to the question based on the opinions of folks that actually cruise the Bahamas. They’ve expressed their opinion by the boat that they actually sail in those waters. They have voted for their practical choice of a cruising boat with their wallets.

What we have here then, are the summarized results of a survey of the numbers and types of boats observed actually cruising the Bahamas over the fall 2005 through spring 2006 season.

The method was simply to log the type, length, flag, rig and name of cruising boats observed in various anchorages or underway during the season in the Bahamas. The boat names were recorded to avoid including the same boat twice in the database. Then we built a database of the boats observed and added to the records, data representing some physical characteristics of the boats (i.e. beam, draft, displacement) to the extent we could find numbers. Then finally the data was analyzed, attempting to extract information that may help someone establish some sort of parameters around the boat that they would buy in order to sail the same area.

Some explanations are in order. First we recorded the flag of the vessels in order to look at trends by flag and to spot differences that may be significant to the prospective cruiser. For example, if your home port is Halifax, Nova Scotia, then your choice of boat may not be based strictly on the cruising conditions of winter in the Bahamas but rather has features more suited to their home waters; a pilothouse for example. Whereas a Florida based boat may have no requirement for that feature.

Rig characteristics were recorded since some designs are available in multiple configurations. The rig type was recorded in the following fashion: No distinction was made between sloops and cutters. No distinction was made between ketches and yawls. Schooners are two (or more) masted vessels where the after (or central) mast is taller than the foremast. Cat, gaff, junk and other special rigs are noted where the distinction was obvious. No square-rigged vessels were noted.

Some vessels in the database were not identified as to Builder/Designer or model. While every effort was made to identify vessels, some just escaped. The length of these vessels was estimated, flag, rig, name, hull configuration were noted. Unidentified vessels make up slightly less than 10% of the database and you might think that some results such as averages would be skewed by these estimates. However, I have calculated these averages both with and without the unidentified population and there were no discrepancies worth noting.

So given those preliminaries, here’s what we found. We logged a total of 425 vessels.

The overall average (mean) size of vessels (all 425 vessels) was 39.1ft. The typical vessel (mode) is 38.0ft long and the median (data mid point) vessel is 39.0ft. Which means that equal numbers of vessels are either shorter or longer than 39 ft.

When monohulls are taken alone, the averages are the same. The unidentified boats do not have any impact either.

Now, if we look at averages by flag, we find that Canadian vessels represent 16% of the observed data boats and US flagged vessels 80%, the remaining 4% is made up of a variety of flags. This is somewhat surprising since my impression was that the split was more even.

Overall, Canadian flagged vessels are on average 37.4ft long compared to the US average length of 39.4. I find it interesting that boats from farther away are slightly smaller than the averages.

Surprisingly catamarans which made up 18% of the data boats, averaged slightly shorter at 38.8 ft long. The mode and median catamaran were 37ft and 38ft respectively. I say surprisingly because the size of the typical cat is not significantly different from the size of the monohulls. I expected a larger variation there. There were only 4 trimarans in the data and they ranged from 34ft to 40ft all US flagged.

Canadian cats made up less than 1% of the database, US flagged cats 98% and all other flags the balance. Canadian cats averaged 3 ft shorter than the average for US flagged cats.

By rig type, we found that sloops (including cutters) made up 88%, ketches 8% and schooners 1% with the balance made up of various specialty rigs none of which represents a statistically significant percentage. Correlating overall length with rig type gives an interesting sidelight. Schooners average 54ft LOA while sloops average 38.5ft and ketches 43.1ft. The catamarans in the database were all sloops.

We then took a look at characteristics such as draft, beam and displacement and found that the typical Bahamian cruiser displaces 20,077 lbs, has a beam of 12.3ft and a draft of 5.2ft.

So with a merge of typical and averages, the likely Bahamas cruising boat that we observed over the winter of 2005-2006 looks like this; when compared to other well known averages.

	Bahamas Cruiser	CW Readers Boat	OCC Ideal Boat	Optimal Cruiser
Hull	Monohull	Monohull	Monohull	Monohull
LOA	39.1	40	43	40.1
Beam	12.3	12	12.5	11.7
Draft	5.2	5.8	6	6
Rig	sloop/cutter	cutter	cutter	cutter
Disp	20,077	24600	27000	19800

Our Bahamas Cruiser is the first column. The CW Readers Boat is the Ideal boat as defined by a readers survey conducted by Cruising World magazine. The OCC Ideal Boat is the boat defined by a similar survey of members of the Offshore Cruising Club. The Optimal Cruiser comes from an average of 151 cruising boat designs by several prominent cruising boat designers including Alberg, Alden, Brewer, Crealock, Hess, Hood, Mason, Paine, Perry and others.

Interestingly, our Bahamas boat is not that different. It’s a tad shorter, a bit shallower and a bit beamier.

Then we tried to analyze brand names … of course, there are a lot of Catalinas, Hunters, and Beneteaus but Island Packet, Morgan and Jeanneau are just as well represented. But keep in mind that Morgan (now a Catalina brand) for example, includes the Out Island Series an immensely popular cruiser of a few years ago. Also the Island Packet, Jeanneau and Endeavor numbers include their catamaran models. The following chart shows the distribution of the top ten Builder/Designers by number of boats observed.

So what are the most popular models? Of course the venerable Morgan Out Island 41 tops the list, followed by the Island Packet 380. Next there’s a couple of catamarans; The Prout Snowgoose and PDQ 36 and a Canadian monohull design, the CS 36. The Mantas would have tied for second if I included the 42 ft model which is virtually the same boat. Of course, the Lagoon cats are very popular in all their versions. Then there’s a small cluster of designs represented by 4 examples of each. Here’s a graphic representation of the top ten (urrr 13). All other models in the data had less than 4 examples.

Some statistics we did not collect include crew size and cruising plans. If I can be allowed a generality, many of these Bahamas cruising boats are crewed by two people and most are retired, seasonal sailors. That is, they return to their homeport over the summer. Not all certainly, but a lot of folks out there seem to be in this circumstance.

So what does this mean in terms of buying your next boat for cruising the Bahamas?

Well, if you’re eyeballing that junk rigged 32 footer with a draft of 7 feet, you’re going to be outside of these averages. The huge variety of boats in the database illustrates however, that given certain characteristics most boats will do the job.

Based on these averages and assuming no special requirements, the boat I would recommend for most couples cruising the Bahamas would be a monohull sloop (or cutter) of about 40 ft with a draft of something about 5ft and a beam around 12ft that displaces around 20,000lbs. If a catamaran has your eye then a boat similar to the Manta 42, Lagoon 380 or lagoon 410 would be my choice.

There are lots of boats out there that meet those approximate numbers. This size boat seems to be popular with cruising couples as it can be handled pretty well by shorthanded crews, provides substantial comfort both at sea and at anchor and can carry all the cruising equipment needed for an extended stay in the islands. Sailing performance will be pretty good too.

Personally I would prefer less draft but many folks we know, manage just fine with 6ft. Keep in mind that while less draft gets you into shallower anchorages, less draft also means less stability. Likewise, less displacement may mean better performance when the waves are small but heavier boats are more comfortable both at sea and at anchor. Then too, catamarans are a popular option. Some shallow draft models have the advantage of tucking into small, shallow hidey-holes when weather threatens plus they offer virtually level sailing.

Cruisers heading from the Bahamas to the northeast US coast via offshore routes will probably appreciate a heavier boat with good seaworthiness numbers. Others may desire a boat with a bigger engine because they do a lot of motor sailing or navigate inland waterways. Some cruisers want sailing performance and so should compare various designs against race rating numbers. Of course, cost is the most important feature and nothing says you can’t do it in a smaller boat. After all 50% of the boats in the database are smaller than 39 ft.