Several readers apparently want to know what I’d consider a VolksCruiser and the best I can seem to come up with is it all depends… Obviously, it has to be affordable and by affordable we do not mean affordable by someone with a trust fund or a Swiss bank account so let’s just say something a blue collar worker or someone who works at the local Starbucks can put together with some hard work and a bit of sacrifice. So, for the sake of argument, let’s say the VolksCruiser is going to set you back somewhere south of $25K. Ah, I can hear you saying to yourself “But, I can’t get a boat for less than $25K!”… Well as luck (or the destruction of our economy) would have it, there are a lot of cheap boats out there… Go to Craiggers and do a search for sailboats under $10K and you will see lots of interesting boats there for a lot less… Because the VolksCruiser needs to be affordable to sail and keep up, it most likely would be under forty-feet in length and not a multihull (Hey, I LIKE multihulls but you’re simply not going to find one or keep it sailing on a VolksCruiser budget). The smaller the boat the easier it is to keep things cheap and as the saying goes…
“Small boat small problems”
I live in Australia, but was able to find some amazing sharpie plans up to 60 feet and cheap from the Smithsonian, ship catalog.
These could easily be adapted to modern Materials., epoxy plywood,Aluminum, and steel and be true wind ships with solar and wind,also Ruel Parkers plans for his 45 foot Trail able Sharpies like,Ibis