Hi

We are a family of 4, with young kids ages 6 and 8. We are just getting into sailing now the kids are just about old enough, and thinking about buying a family boat. It needs to be big enough to confortably fit the 4 of us, but to be sailed by only 2 people max.

I've been looking at wayfarers, from comments on other posts on this forum. I would prefer to buy second hand and get a ready to sail set-up with trailer etc, and the ones I have seen advertised for about £2-3000 have mainly been 1970s-1980s and wooden. Some of them appear to have been very well kept, new parts replaced as necessary and in good condition. But is we go down this route are we just setting ourselves up for replairs and problems all the time. Would it be better forking out twice as much for a new one?

Do the older wooden ones sail very differently to the new ones?

Many thanks for any advice you can offer, I am very new to all this and don't want to make an expensive mistake...

Cheers

Most Wayfarers sail well if properly set up, but as ever you get what you pay for.

Flavour of the moment are the new grp Hartley boats, available as racers with foam sandwich construction, or much cheaper without the foam but still outwardly identical. Opinions are divided, but my view is that the top wooden boats can still keep up. Older grp are generally a bit slower but correspondingly cheaper.

I know of one wooden boat which was sent to Paintcraft a few years ago, and has been sailed regularly since with very little maintenance. I guess that in a year or so the owner will organise another trip to Paintcraft and the cycle will continue. While the Paintcraft prices might seem high, if the cost is effectively spread over a number of years it begins to look pretty cheap.

The only Wayfarers that i would avoid would be the SD - self-drainer, and the World - also a self-drainer. Both those boats are just fine when they are sailing, and actually rather convenient in that they get rid of water quickly, but both invert on capsizing and are tricky to get upright and sail away in a blow. OK, you shouldn't capsize a Wayfarer very often, but it's not a characteristic you want in a family boat.

Sure, the wooden boats and the Mk1, 2 and Plus S variants come up full of water and take a while to empty, but at least they are very easy to right - a much safer characteristic in my view.

With many helms buying new Hartleys, now is an excellent time to bag a top class wooden boat.

Details of the different versions here: http://www.wayfarer.org.uk/uploads/Wayfarer_Versions_2009_v7.pdf - http://www.wayfarer.org.uk/uploads/Wayfarer_Versions_2009_v7 .pdf

Rest assured that the Wayfarer is one of the few dinghies that will comfortably meet your needs.

Tha reminds me of those specs for cruisers such as claim that a 34-footer is 8-berth, when in fact it's comfy for two couples for a week. There's a difference between the number of people you can seat/fit in when motoring a dinghy, and how many can comfortably sail aboard.

I've sailed a Wayfarer with a dozen people on board for transport across a bay, but for racing two is the ideal number, and for cruising I guess you could happily fit in a couple of kids, but you need the sort of space offered by a Wayfarer to do it comfortably.

I'd second the jockey wheel recommendation.

Round Britain in a Wayfarer with motley crew. Have a look here for inspiration!:

http://www.fransbigadventure.com/ - http://www.fransbigadventure.com/

I think Leaders are probably a better bet being lighter and as fast as Wayfs, Wanderers and GPs , easier up the slipway too and they can take a reasonable outboard.