Considering a floating caravan

[paulbrown22]

Originally Posted by Pikey Dave

The only boat that would get me out of RIBs is a Nordhavn, I can but dream[emoji849]

I love the Nordhavns as extended cruisers, but think you really have to be in the position where you are setting off for longer voyages, or living onboard for extended periods, with less time restrictions or work calling! Otherwise you end up with a very solid and nicely appointed boat that will only do 6-8kn realistically, and so relatively limiting for weekend/holiday usage. The reason I love my RIB and keep it as well as the offshore sailing yacht is the time factor - similar to a Nordhavn the sailing yacht does 6-7kn, and in that something like Weymouth is half a day's journey (so basically a 2 day trip to get there and back), whereas in the RIB I can be there in < 1 hour, and happily just pop there and back for lunch :-). I do love the sailing and passage making, and have had many wonderful 3 week holidays onboard cruising to the West Country, Scilly, Ile de Batz, Morbihan, etc., but sometimes it is nice to get there quicker! Then we should discuss e.g. a Fleming 55...

If I was in a position to leave the office and do longer offshore passage making by power instead of sail, personally I'd take one of the Dashew's (sadly no longer built) FPB series, which go a reasonable bit faster than the Nordhavns, and being able to hold a constant and efficient 10-12kn makes quite a big difference I think. But I appreciate they are a love/hate thing - having an aluminium sailing yacht personally I loved them since first seeing the original Windhorse many years ago at Lymington! But on the downside, the additional volume in a Nordhavn means you do get more living space in the equivalent length Nordy, but at the expense of some stability/speed. Both very nicely engineered though for real usage.

Definitely nowhere close in my future either, so for now other options will have to suffice, given our current type of usage.

[Pikey Dave]

Originally Posted by paulbrown22

I love the Nordhavns as extended cruisers, but think you really have to be in the position where you are setting off for longer voyages, or living onboard for extended periods, with less time restrictions or work calling! Otherwise you end up with a very solid and nicely appointed boat that will only do 6-8kn realistically, and so relatively limiting for weekend/holiday usage. The reason I love my RIB and keep it as well as the offshore sailing yacht is the time factor - similar to a Nordhavn the sailing yacht does 6-7kn, and in that something like Weymouth is half a day's journey (so basically a 2 day trip to get there and back), whereas in the RIB I can be there in < 1 hour, and happily just pop there and back for lunch :-). I do love the sailing and passage making, and have had many wonderful 3 week holidays onboard cruising to the West Country, Scilly, Ile de Batz, Morbihan, etc., but sometimes it is nice to get there quicker! Then we should discuss e.g. a Fleming 55...

If I was in a position to leave the office and do longer offshore passage making by power instead of sail, personally I'd take one of the Dashew's (sadly no longer built) FPB series, which go a reasonable bit faster than the Nordhavns, and being able to hold a constant and efficient 10-12kn makes quite a big difference I think. But I appreciate they are a love/hate thing - having an aluminium sailing yacht personally I loved them since first seeing the original Windhorse many years ago at Lymington! But on the downside, the additional volume in a Nordhavn means you do get more living space in the equivalent length Nordy, but at the expense of some stability/speed. Both very nicely engineered though for real usage.

Definitely nowhere close in my future either, so for now other options will have to suffice, given our current type of usage.

We have RIB & campervan. Our RIB has been to Croatia/Italy/france (north & south)/Spain/ Portugal/The length & breadth of the UK. The only way I could improve on that is in a long distance cruiser, hence the lusting after a Nordhvn. We’ve considered a smaller cruiser but we don’t think we could improve on the flexibility & practicality of the RIB/camper combo.
Fortunately we’re in the “every day’s a Saturday club” so time isn’t an issue 🥳

[paulbrown22]

Agreed, towing the RIB, especially as far as you do, opens up yet another world of possibilities.

Doing those journeys (or more) in a Nordhavn or similar will take an awful lot longer (and more diesel!) than towing the RIB with the campervan, but being a member of that exclusive club sounds ideal, and would make even more amazing destinations possible. Always nice to dream (and watch YouTube) :-).

For now given our constraints we cheat every so often and charter sailing yachts elsewhere to get a little bit of that dream...

[gtflash]

Windy scirocco, windy tornado, and old Hunton are on my list but not for a couple of years. Tornados seem to be coming down in price due to their funny aft deck layout. It looks a waste of space but is quite functional IMO. Shame you weren’t chasing the scirocco out in snotty weather.

Also love botnias and my mate has a 32 but the cabin space is limited for the money and size. Selling a scorpion cabin rib with a tight two berths to the other half is also a loosing battle. grossly over priced hence why they don’t sell.

I only realised how good my boat was when a racer mate who had racing history in rings, phantoms, huntons, osprey lynx, raced around Britain on a 9m pascoe a revenger and more ospreys commented that it was the softest riding boat he had ever been on. You forget the bad manners of the slammers quite quickly as you naturally get bigger and quicker in boats. I would never choose to have a beamy cabin boat again but I might loose that battle eventually. Red funnel wake used to knock the bejesus out of us at 20mph in a 21ft regal. Now I skip it at 40-60. I need my hull with one of those posh lids and a couple of beds.


beneteau antares look lovely and the sales techniques are car salesmen style so the OP might be able to bum a ride on a snotty day. I’d love to know the result.

Originally Posted by paulbrown22

Agreed, I love the Scorpion cabin RIB's, and obviously superb sea keeping, but I still think that for the size and price accommodation/facilities are very limited and still somewhat basic.

I started looking at Botnia Targas which obviously have a superb reputation and ability for sea keeping too, but personally I think the pilot house design leaves quite a lot of open deck space that isn't particularly useful for me. But then earlier this year my RIB was berthed for a while between a Windy Scirocco 32 and a Windy Grand Mistral 37 Hardtop, which I'd always heard about but never really stopped to look at, and I started admiring them and thinking they seem to have a pretty good layout for what would be my intended usage with a very young family, and still pretty good sea keeping. I ended up beside the Windy 32 going out of Poole Harbour one day, admittedly a fairly calm day, and it was easily keeping up with me on the 9m Ribtec (although admittedly using a lot more diesel to do so!).

[paulbrown22]

Sounds like there's going to be a run on Sciroccos/Tornados in the next few years then!

Likewise, it's going to quite a challenge going from what is a superbly performing RIB to something else. Which is why I'm quite keen to find something that still has pretty good seakeeping abilities, but does offer reasonable family accommodation as well, and has the ability to spend multiple nights onboard.

I don't really want to end up with just a "floating caravan" which might be great for pottering around with the family on sunny days, but can't actually go places as well when I want it to! (unless of course I keep the RIB as well, but I couldn't justify the cost of storage/maintenance for two fairly large motor boats, and wouldn't have the time to use both of them enough either!)

[GuyC]

What about a Nelson?

[paulbrown22]

Yes, I do like the idea of the various Nelson type boats, and many years ago before we bought the sailing yacht I remember looking at the Seawards from Cowes. But I think they are pretty expensive to buy, very expensive to run at a decent turn of speed given their semi displacement hulls, and often still have fairly limited and tight accommodation space as well.

But I do love their seakeeping abilities, very traditional looks, and typically much more basic shaft-driven setup!