[Rhodes22-list] came home without it...

[Rob S.]

Still not a Rhodes owner.  Nice boat, but definitely not something I'd want to 
try to rig and launch single-handed in a cross current.   And not the sort of 
boat I'd pull out of the garage and take to the local water on a whim after work 
some day.     


Would be a great bay boat, something to spend a weekend (or more) on, exploring 
the Chesapeake.   But I get to salty water once or twice a season on my 17, and 
I've done the "hey it's a nice breeze, think I'll get the boat out this 
afternoon" thing many more times.    I'd be giving that up for a weekend boat 
that I probably wouldn't use as much (wife and I rarely have the same weekend 
free of other obligations) 



I'm weighing the pros and cons of the R22, my V17 and some mystery boat that 
might be somewhere in between.  V21/22? Catalina 22? --  those two seem to be 
designed primarily as trailerable first, sailboats second.   While I'd like to 
stick to the purest virtues of marlinspike sailing, my wants are more in line 
with lightweight trailerables.  


So I'm on the fence.   Driving home I was thinking "now I see the appeal of 
those Macgregor 26x things -- roomy enough to camp in, but light enough to 
trailer easily and kick it off the dock if needed.

My V17 has three stays, weighs 800 lbs empty, I raise the mast with only my two 
hands, and I can push the trailer around my driveway and lift the tongue 
myself.  But no pop top, no furler and it's tight inside.   But the money I 
would spend on someone else's R22 (and then whatever I'd spend making it MY R22) 
would make my V17 the nicest in existence, and "fix" many of the problems I have 
with it --  no lights, difficult sail handling, some cosmetics) 


Ugh!  Why can't these decisions be easy?      Dry sailing?  slip?  bigger tow 
vehicle? (140,000 mile 6 cylinder pickup truck known to have fragile 
transmissions) 

I'm already on a tight budget.  If this $2500 boat looked like the $20,000 
recycled at the Rhodes show I'd be washing it in the driveway right now and I'd 
really enjoy it 6 weekends out of the year.    But like any thirty plus year old 
boat there's a fair amount of things I'd want to fix/replace/fabricate/etc. that 
would be considerable work and/or cost for me and not worth the effort for the 
return of 6 weekends a year. 


I guess this really isn't the kind of post I expect a reply to.  There isn't a 
clear answer.

Rob