Our Cal 34 “So It Goes” was bought because, having lost our Loose Moose 2, we needed a boat in a hurry to use until we could build a Loose Moose 3. As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time to have a temporary boat.
Being a temporary boat, it gave me the freedom to try a lot of new things. If I thought something could be done better I would get out the sawzall and go to town, throw a mockup together and see how it works. As a result, an oft-heard comment aboard was “Seemed like a good idea at the time!”. Truth be told, when we got around to naming the boat I was very tempted to name it Test Bed but we settled on So it Goes because that was our response to the newspaper reporter asking us what it was like to lose your boat…
While using the boat as a test bed, I quickly came to the conclusion that Bill Lapworth knew what he was doing when he designed the CAL 34. It really made a lot more sense to just follow the plan because making it a better boat was pretty much not going to happen. Sure, from time to time I made small improvements but, in the lens of 20/20 hindsight, the best thing would have to been to keep to the original plan because outfoxing Lapworth is something of a loser’s game.
The only real regret I have is that to make real inroads into improving the breed I really should have had a second CAL 34 as a control to use in various tests for comparison.
As the T-shirt says…
Which is all to point out that “So It Goes” is, at best, a bit of a freak show or an assemblage of systems more or less sailing in the same general direction and not ready to sell without my getting it back, more or less, into the boat Bill Lapworth designed and a proper bespoke VolksCruiser..
Rob. Please don’t confess that all the work you have done and all the innovations tried have been just to keep us educated and informed. Whatever, you have done a very good job of that and we are all much more knowledgeable and wise than we would have been if you had done nothing.
All grateful!