Most “How to buy a boat” articles start off with describing different types of boat, and the advantages and disadvantages of each. This one however will start with something quite different, something which is not always thought about when people’s minds turn to buying a boat. This is “....where will you keep it?

As Yachtsnet specialises in sailing yachts, we will not discuss powerboats. For a sailing yacht, you have a number of choices:

Keep it at home

A mooring

A marina or pontoon berth

Dry sail

These choices influence your type of boat, and within each option there are several different factors that influence the precise type of boat best suited, and of course the cost.

Beneteau in France have been building a popular series of 20-21 ft trailer-sailers for many years - the current model is the First 20: these are fast for their size, but have minimal accommodation.

The smaller Cornish Crabbers are probably the most popular trailable boats in the UK: with gaff rigs and hence relatively short masts they trail well given a large vehicle.

In comparison with launching a small powerboat from a trailer, launching and rigging a sailing yacht is very time-consuming, as you have to put up the mast and rig sails. Many people with “trailable” boats in fact only launch them in spring and retrieve them in autumn, leaving them on a mooring or marina berth through the summer. The trailer is a way to keep them at home in the winter, at no storage cost, and to be convenient for working on over the winter and spring for maintenance. The Polish-built Ocean 760 shown here is at 26 ft one of the biggest genuinely trailable boats.

There are a few trailable sailing boats that are designed to be dual-purpose “power-sailers”, with a sailing rig plus a powerful engine to give planing powerboat performance. The Tattoo 26 shown here is the latest incarnation of the US-built Macgregor 26X, probably the most common model of this type of boat. Inevitably there are compromises between the design requirements of sail and power, but for some people they may be just what is needed, particularly for lake or sheltered coastal water use.

When we talk of moorings we mean boats tied to buoys in a harbour. You will need a means of getting to the boat, usually via a dinghy kept ashore, or in some places there are “water taxi” services that will take you to your moored boat. Some yacht clubs offer a similar “club launch” service for club members, but all these services have one snag - if you get back to your mooring late in the evening, the club launch or water taxi service may have stopped running.

Deepwater moorings are not necessarily in especially deep water - the phrase simple means that the mooring position will always have enough tidal height to keep the boat floating. In popular locations deepwater moorings are highly sought after, and in many harbours there is a substantial waiting list to get one - sometimes ten years or more. So do not think you can just buy a 30 to 40 foot yacht and turn up in Dartmouth or Salcombe, and ask the harbourmaster for a yearly mooring.

In quite a few locations such as Falmouth (pictured here), the harbourmaster keeps a waiting list for moorings, but you can only get on to the waiting list if you live locally.

Moorings are almost always substantially cheaper - often a quarter or less of the cost - of marina berths or other pontoon moorings with shore access in the same area.

As well as moorings arranged and sublet by the various harbour authorities, there are in many places privately owned moorings, which are available to rent. Availability of these varies considerably: but again the more popular the harbour the scarcer these often are.

Drying moorings will let the boat settle down onto the bottom at low water, and can thus only be used by sailing yachts that can “take the ground” - usually those with bilge keels or lifting or centreboard type keels. Drying moorings are almost always considerably cheaper than deepwater moorings, and are usually much easier to obtain, although in very popular areas there can still be a waiting list.

With a drying mooring you are typically restricted to sailing off or returning to the mooring for a number of hours each tide - the more restriction there is typically the less desirable and hence cheaper the mooring will be.

Trot moorings are an alternative way of mooring, which allows more yachts to fit in a given area of seabed. Boats are moored bow and stern to a series of buoys (or sometimes steel or wooden piles) so they cannot swing in a circle. Here in the River Medina upstream of Cowes on the Isle of Wight lines of boats are moored between piles on the edge of the deep water channel up the river.

Dartmouth is one of the most popular yachting harbours in the UK, and it has every type of mooring imaginable, from temporary visitors pontoons, through midstream trot moorings seen here aft of the yacht on the pontoon, visitors buoys, and fully serviced marina berths.

Marinas are for most people the preferred way to keep a yacht: you can drive up and park nearby, and wheel a trolley down to the boat with your bags and any supplies you want to bring. You can connect to mains power, have fresh water on tap nearby to full the boat's tanks, and the marina will have showers, washrooms and frequently a bar, restaurant and launderette on-site.

The only price you pay for this convenience is in money - marina berths will typically cost from £4,000 to £7,000 a year for a 35 ft yacht, the rates depending on the exact length and how popular and convenient the marina is.

Most marinas are deep-water, with access at all states of the tide for most yachts. Some however are accessed via lock gates and you can only enter or leave at certain states of the tide.

A few other places have "cills", ledges that retain water in an inner part of a harbour when the tide drops, and you can only cross these cills once the tide has risen over them by enough to let the boat pass.

In places where there is high demand and thus pressure to fit in more moorings, it is not uncommon to have rows of pontoons which are not connected to the shore: the photo above here shows one at Cowes, but they exist in many other popular yachting harbours. These are used both as temporary visitors moorings and permanent berths.

The photo at left shows drying pontoon moorings - not uncommon and often run by boatyards as a way of increasing income. Access is obviously restricted by tide times, and usage to boats that can dry out safely.

Dry Sail

The final option for keeping a sailing yacht is to “dry sail” her. This means that the boat stays ashore in a boatyard, until you phone them and tell them you want her in the water on a given day. You arrive on the day, and your boat is afloat on a convenient pontoon mooring, ready for you to step aboard. In some places this is very popular, especially for those who race, as the boat always has a clean smooth hull for speed. The cost is often fairly similar to a pontoon berth - the snag is that you may be out of luck getting launched if you wait to phone the yard till the morning of the first day of a bank holiday weekend.

Centreboard yachts are relatively rare, except in the smaller sizes. The centreboard is a hinged lifting keel, which can either be heavy, and part of the yacht’s ballast, or simply a relatively lightweight keel to reduce leeway. In order that the centreboard takes up minimal cabin space, the centreboard (sometimes called a centreplate) is often mainly external. Most centreboard yachts can use drying moorings, though those with external keel stubs may lean over substantially when aground. Kirie in France also built ‘Feeling’ centreboard yachts up to about 44 ft.

The main UK builder of centreboard yachts was Northshore with their ‘Southerly’ range from 32 to 57 feet, though Northshore called the boats “swing keel”. (Northshore went into administration in early 2013). Photo at right shows a Southerly 110 ashore.

The French companies Ovni and Allures build a number of production aluminum-hulled centreboard yachts, often with the hulls left unpainted as seen at right (Ovni). These share the ability of the Southerly to dry out flat on the hull bottom on soft or sandy ground.

Beneteau and Jeanneau in France have for many years (and still do) built a number of small and quite fast centreboard yachts such as the First 21.7 in the photo at left. These have the centreboard retracting into a shallow fixed keel. This means that whilst they can dry out in soft mud (where the shallow fixed keel sinks in ) they heel over considerably if dried out on firm sand. For these yachts, the lifting centreboard is more about making them trailable than for use on drying moorings.

Note however that to float this yacht off her trailer you would have to immerse it quite deeply - difficult to do without also getting the tow vehicle in the water. Most users of these small trailer-sailers actually get boatyards to crane the boat in, just using the trailer to allow moving between locations a few times each year.

Some of the larger Beneteau and Jeanneau lift-keel yachts, like this Oceanis 361, are offered with a centreboard option, which has the centreboard housed in quite a substantial shallow winged fin keel, with twin rudders. The design is such that at the yachts can be dried out on sand or mud with the hull balanced on keel base and rudder tips. Lifting the keel is normally arranged via many turns of a winch handle inserted into a socket on the saloon table. Most of the ballast on these boats is in the fixed keel - the centreboard is lowered to reduce leeway when sailing to windward.

Lift-keel yachts are in general similar in concept to centreboard yachts, the only real difference being that the keel lifts vertically rather than hinging up aft as with a centreboard. The Beneteau First 27.7 shown here is a typical example: with all the ballast in the lead bulb at the keel base, this results in a very fast little yacht, though with a fairly spartan interior - see our archives page for the design.

In the UK John Baker built a series of lift-keel yachts called Seals and Super Seals. After Baker closed down, the Super Seals evolved into the Parker Yacht models from 27 to 34 ft long. These were built from the 1980s to 2009, when the company went into administration. Slightly more cruising-orientated than the Beneteau Firsts, though still fast boats, they also had ballasted lift keels, the larger ones usually with electric winches for raising and lowering the quite heavy keels.

The photo shows a Parker 325 - more information on our archives page

Some of the earlier bilge keel yachts, such as the blue hulled 1960s Macwester 26 seen at left here, had very shallow keels giving poor windward performance. Others however, for example the British Hunter 23 at right, had deeper and much more efficient keels - Hunter actually preferring to call their boats "twin fin" rather than "bilge keel".

The classic twin bilge keel yacht was the 26 ft Westerly Centaur designed by Laurent Giles after tank testing of the hull and keels. About 2,500 of these were built over a 15 year production run.

Almost all the many Westerly designs were offered with bilge keels as an option, in sizes up to 36 ft.

The other major British yachtbuilder to offer bilge keel variants of their designs was Moody - the Moody 36 shown at left was one of these.

Whilst Moody branded yachts are still available, the company is now under different ownership, and only builds fin keel yachts.

A less common variant of the bilge keel concept is triple-keeled yachts, where the main ballast and keel area is in the centre keel, but there are smaller bilge keels which primarily serve to keep the yacht upright when aground. The Seadog 30 seen here is a good example.

Fin keel yachts have a single fin keel of iron or lead, with a separate rudder blade. Currently most production sailing yachts are of this type. A reasonably deep single keel gives good windward performance, at the price of needing a deep water mooring or berth. Ashore, fin keel yachts need to be supported in cradles, or with props.

Modern production boats are often sold with a choice of deep or shallow fin keels, the deeper-keeled versions giving better performance, and the shallow fin versions bought by users whose sailing or mooring area has lots of shallow areas.

The photo above shows a bulbed fin keel, probably the most common form on modern production sailing yachts. The bulb at the bottom concentrates the ballast weight low, increasing it's effectiveness in resisting heeling.

Older yachts, such as the Sigma 36 at right often have tapered fin keels, but the ballast weight is usually greater to compensate.

There are a number of variants of the fin keel: two shown below are the "torpedo" keel, commonly found on high performance yachts, and winged keels, which are designed to give better performance with shallower draught than an equivalent bulbed or simple fin keel.

A rare option is the tandem keel with two fins supporting a bulbed base, designed to be shallow draught but more efficient than a single shallow fin keel. Tandem keels are fairly rare, but are found on some Etaps and Bavarias.

Long keel yachts are now rarely built, though a few niche market builders do still produce yachts with long keels. Technically a long keel is one that runs underwater almost the whole length of the hull, but the term is nowadays often used to refer to what is really a cutaway long keel, with the forward keel edge set back from the bow.

A Vancouver 32 with a very much cutaway long keel: note also the large gap between rudder and keel, which combined with the forward "cutaway" gives the design considerably more manoueuvrability than a true long or full keel.

A true long keel on a Heard 35, a design taken from lines plans of tradition working sailing boats. Long keels give yachts steady handling at sea, and in bad weather, but their weakness for modern yachting is inabilty to steer reliably (or at all) whilst astern under power, making berthing in tight marina berths potentially difficult. Despite this, longkeelers' virtues exceed their downsides for many owners.

Long-keelers are sometimes dried out (either ashore for maintenance or on drying moorings with a firm bottom) by using legs - sturdy timber or metal posts which are bolted through the hull at the top, and controlled fore and aft by lines. Occasionally fin-keelers also use legs, but it is rare. The problem with using legs on a drying mooring is that they are very big objects to stow aboard when sailing.

Multihulls

Catamarans stay almost upright when sailing, are usually shallow draught, and can dry out on a beach if necessary. They have a spacious cockpit, and can have twin engines for reliability and control under power.

These days most catmarans are aimed at cruising use, particularly in the tropics - this French-built Lagoon 380 is typical of the breed. With narrower individual hulls and no heavy ballast keels, they are often faster than a similarly sized monohull – especially off the wind.

There are advantages and disadvantages: the wide beam gives (except in the smaller sizes) very spacious accommodation - this photo at right is the saloon of the Lagoon 380 cruising catamaran. The sleeping cabins are at a lower level, in the hulls themselves.

Against this must be set higher berthing fees in many marinas, and the fact that some people simply do not like them, often for spurious reasons. Critics point out that a catamaran or trimaran can be capsized, and once capsized will remain afloat but inverted. In practice capsizing a cruising multihull is an exceptionally rare occurrence. Multihull enthusiasts retort that monohulls can sink - but that too is incredibly rare in practice.

Trimarans do not usually have the sheer volume of interior and cockpit space of most modern cruisng catamarans, as only the central hull is used for accommodation. They are however usually faster, and chosen by those who value fast passage times over space.

Right: Interior of a Bavaria 38, which is very much a "budget" boat, built down to a price. Below a similar aged (about 7 years old) Hallberg-Rassy 37 which cost more than twice as much when new.

At first glance the two interiors do not look that different in general style and finish. But dfferences there are.....

The bulkheads on the Bavaria are attached to the hull and deckhead by mastic, whilst on the Hallberg-Rassy they are glassed in place. The headlining on the Bavaria is moulded, with some of the wiring for lights buried inside the moulding. On the Rassy the headlining is in removable panels, to facilitate long-term maintenance. Both boats use veneered ply with solid wood trim, but on the Rassy the veneers are thicker and better quality, better varnished and on better quality ply substrates. The Rassy has much more detailed solid timberwork.

For the buyer of a secondhand yacht, the price differential remains - the “quality” yacht will almost always command a higher price than the “production” boat of a similar size. As boats age, you often find that the interior joinery of a quality built yacht survives years of wear and tear much better than the cheaper equivalent.

On deck, however, there is one big difference - the cost of replacing teak decking. With a “cheap” boat - if there is ever such a thing - with luck there will be very little external woodwork to maintain, and if there are glued-on panels of thin decorative teak they can be replaced either with new thin teak, or with one of the synthetic substitutes at not too horrendous a cost. Often, however, a “quality” yacht will have a “proper” teak deck - individual shaped thicker teak planks screwed down with hundreds of small screws, the screwhead holes plugged with matching teak plugs, and the planking seams caulked. Once this sort of traditional teak decking reaches the end of it’s life (often because of over-aggressive cleaning) a like-for-like replacement can be truly eyewateringly expensive.

The smaller the sailing yacht the better it will be with a tiller. On this Moody 31-footer even a small wheel would occupy half the cockpit, whilst the tiller can just get hinged up against the backstay to be out of the way when moored. Also a tiller gives a much more direct and precise "feel" to the steering, and makes it easier to sense when sail trim is correct.

As boats become larger the load on a tiller increases, and although a few yachts up to about 45 feet are tiller steered, a wheel with gearing to take the load makes helming lighter work. The "break-even" point is usually about 35 ft.

Most production cruisers over about 32 ft from the 1990s until very recently - around 2010 or so - came as standard with a wheel something like this..... The wheel size has to be relatively small so that you can get step-aboard stern access through the removable seat section.

At first glance it looks good: a nice seat behind the wheel, an instrument panel in front, with a folding cockpit table attached to the pedestal.

In fact virtually no-one - and certainly no skilled sailor -ever actually sits behind a wheel like this very often. You either stand behind the wheel or sit at one side out near the gunwale so you can see the sail trim better.

As a result many racing yachts - where good sail trim is vital - usually had very large wheels such as this example. From a cruising/family use point of view this effectively cuts the cockpit in half.

The one advantage of a wheel or twin wheels over a tiller is that permanently installed wheel autopilots are usually superior to tiller pilots that have to be plugged in and clipped on to brackets when needed. A very few tiller steered boats have permanently installed autopilot drives, but this is rare.

When the oil price peaked a number of times in the 1970s and 1980s yacht builders worldwide were forced to reduce the amount of (oil-based) resins in their boats. Some went slightly too far, and a number of boat designs from major builders have known weaknesses, which every yacht surveyor knows well. Fortunately with glassfibre it is usually simple enough to reinforce these areas of weakness, and most of these boats have had the appropriate "fix" applied if necessary by now.

Many older GRP yachts such as this Nicholson 32 from the early 1960s are now over 50 years old. Although the hulls may have suffered from "osmosis" (which may or may not have been treated) most are still not just structurally sound but possibly still tougher and stronger than many current new boats.

Few traditional timber yachts have been built since the 1960s - these two are from the 1950s/60s. A traditional timber hull has an almost indefinite life, though after two or three hundred years there may not be that much of the original timber left.

The two yachts illustrated above are of carvel construction - planks are fixed to frames with their edges butting up to produce a smooth hull. The yellow hull is immaculately smooth, as it should be, whilst a prolonged layup has let the caulking between seams on the white hull shrink and dry up.

The other main method of traditional timber construction is clinker built - with overlapping planks as seen at right in a traditional lugger built by Will Stirling in 2007.

The plywood yacht at left is a later build - using modern epoxy glues and epoxy coatings to protect the plywood produces a much lower maintenance and inherently more long-lived hull than the earlier build techniques. The French company RM Yachts are currently producing quite innovative new yachts in epoxy ply.

Steel: Steel is popular with those who want to cruise long distances, as it is very strong, easily repaired almost anywhere, and relatively cheap to build the hull.

A steel hull will usually survive damage that could sink a wooden or GRP yacht, but the price you pay for this is constant vigilance to keep it painted, dealing immediately with any signs of rust. It is rare to see steel yachts much under 35 ft - though we have seen several 30-footers built in this method.

Almost all steel yachts are now painted in various types of epoxy paints, which are very tough and long-lasting. Improvements in paints has meant that yachts designed for steel construction and now able to be able to be built with thinner steel plate, as it is no longer necessary to allow extra thickness for loss by rust.

Ferrocement: In the 1960s and 1970s there was surge in the construction of ferrocement boats - because the raw materials for a hull were cheap. Many were amateur built, and some amateur built ferro boats were very badly built indeed. Ferrocement is a much misunderstood material - it has nothing in common with paving slabs.

A good one, whether amateur or yard-built, is very strong, no heavier than a similar sized steel or GRP boat, and has minimal maintenance.

Photo left: Ferro construction tends to be associated with heavy and often slow long-keelers, but the Hartley 39 RORC yachts, quite a number of which were built in ferro, are in fact fast yachts.

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