Blue Bear

I am contemplating the purchase of my first boat.

I want something small enough that I can sail it myself, but big enough to accommodate the family for a night or two. I’m pretty performance-oriented so I’d like it to have some zip. I’d like to be able to race it someday, but am realistic enough to know that I probably won’t. One of my goals is to get acquainted with boat maintenance and repairs, so I’m not necessarily looking for it to be pristine, but I don’t have the time or skill for major projects. I’d like not to spend a bunch of money. Boats are often called holes in the water that you throw money into. I’d like my first hole to be as small as possible and filling it optional.

I’ve had a J/24 in mind to fit this bill for a long time. They’ve been in production for about 30 years so there are tons of them out there. Their numbers make them real easy to race one-design, which I find a lot more enjoyable than handicap racing. Since lots of folks have them and they’re still in production there is plenty of help out there for parts and maintenance. For all these reasons they seem to be a tad more expensive than they’re actually worth. In theory you can take a 30-year-old hull, spruce it up a little, and win the World’s. The cheap ones are generally beyond help. UsedBoats.com shows two in my area: a 1979 for $4K and a 1977 for $6K.

So when a 1986 Ranger 22 popped up on Craigslist the other day for $2,000 I decided to go have a look at it. The Ranger was built to race so it has that late 70’s/early 80’s sex appeal, but it is also pretty spacious below with a v-berth and two good sized quarter berths. It is a very simple boat, which should make it easy to sail myself and teach my wife. It would be better if it had an asymmetrical spinnaker, but I’m not going to find a sportboat like that that meets my other criteria.

It stinks inside, the plumbing and electrical are shot, the headliner is nasty, and the port side window leaks when it rains. It’s perfect.

The hull and deck appear to be in good shape. The mast and standing rigging are only two years old. I’m told the previous owner put a bend in the old mast and then creased it while trying to get the bend out.

The deck layout is not ideal. All the winches are up on the cabintop which will be a problem for singlehanding. I’d probably want to put some self-tailers on the cockpit coaming so I can trim the jib from the helm.

The bottom is getting some growth on it and the current owner says it hasn’t been cleaned in 3 months. I’m not sure what is normal, but it seems a bottom job with some fresh anti-fouling might be in order.

It has two sets of sails, a cruising set and a racing set. I haven’t had the boat out yet so I don’t know how they look.

The boat does not have a motor included in the $2K price, but the owner has a new Nissan 4HP 4-stroke outboard that he’d throw in with some other stuff for an extra thousand. Probably worth it. I like the Nissan because it can take an external fuel tank and can also put off 12V for charging batteries.

The current owner has only had the boat for 3 months. He’s 23 and has decided he wants to buy a house and doesn’t want the overhead of the boat. Why is such a small boat so much overhead? Because he signed a lease to keep it at a very expensive marina.

Which brings us to the first sticking point. The contingency for getting the boat at $2-3K is that the buyer has to take over the $400/month lease which has 9 months remaining. In talking to the Dockmaster, it seems that a new 12-month lease will be required if the boat changes hands (which I’m not going to contest at this point). So that’s $5K/year to dock a $2-3K boat. Most cheaper marinas have a waiting list and the places that don’t generally have other problems. I have to keep the boat somewhere. I don’t have a trailer or a vehicle to pull the trailer, and I’m not knowledgeable about local marinas, so I’m inclined to accept this situation. If I factor in the extra $200/month over what I think dockage should cost, the boat becomes $4-5K which is still reasonable. The racing sails and motor are probably worth $2K by themselves.

Besides, this is a really nice marina with some really nice boats. I wouldn’t mind hanging out here and meeting the folks on some of these boats. When I was there yesterday I saw a woman doing her laundry at the marina’s facilities. Cool.

The second problem is that this boat is a 1986 and Ranger went out of business in 1985. The hull number starts with “FLZ”, which means that legally it is what is affectionately called a “backyard boat”. The hull is obviously a Ranger 22 and I suspect it was sold unfinished in a fire sale when the company went under. On one hand it might be cool to have the last Ranger 22 ever built, but on the other hand I can see it being a problem that it isn’t technically a Ranger. A valid PHRF (Performance Handicap Rating Formula) certificate comes to mind as a potential problem.

My real problem with the backyard situation is that I’ve seen a picture of the boat when it was out of the water last and it doesn’t have the correct keel. I suspect that in whatever state it was originally sold, the sale did not include a keel. Who the heck knows what kind of keel that is or how it changes the performance of the boat. I can rationalize that I probably won’t ever be competitive with the boat, or that there’s a chance that this keel is better than the original, but I am rather obsessive compulsive about these types of things and that keel is going to bother me.

Oh and forget about getting a standard rating, this thing will have to go through a full measurement and new polars to get a valid certificate. The boat currently has a certificate under the previous owner, so he either is unaware or neglected to mention the keel situation. Before going to see the boat I had pulled the certificate up online and was surprised to see that it didn’t show the hull number. Now I know why.

I ran this all by my dad when he was in town for Christmas. It was very gratifying that he knew the boat right away. “Oh yeah, fractional rig, swept spreaders, low coachhouse, reverse transom, nice looking boat.” When I was whining about the keel, he had the crucial question, “How does it feel?” I don’t know yet, but I’m taking her out tomorrow.