[quote=Andinista][quote=willyjay] or trailer it to the other end of the same lake that is super busy and has no wind or drive 45-60 minutes to launch on a much bigger lake. [/quote]
It sounds like the busy launch plus the low wind section will be worse than the 45-60 min drive. When the approach from the launching point to the area where you want to sail is long and not interesting, it may kill the whole experience, especially if you intend to do multiple laps with different people. Adding a motor for that approach is not something I would like to do either.
If you have to drive some distance and step the mast every time, it's not terrible, as long as you don't intend to go sailing often, like every weekend or multiple days in a row on holidays. If you have to rig a spinnaker it will be worse.
I used to leave the boat mast up on a lake about 2.5 hrs from home, I would go on weekends renting a cabin or sometimes just go for the day. Big part of our time was highly oriented to sailing and that was fine to me but a bit less ideal for the rest of the family. Nice but spending time doing different things would have been appreciated too. Now we got an apartment at the beach, about the same driving time, and leave the boat there but cannot keep it mast up, I store the boat on the trailer and have to drive a few km on the highway to sail. What happened is that now I sail less often but it works well for all, when I sail I get the most out of it and enjoy rigging it as part of the experience, as somebody wisely adviced on this forum. And we enjoy the beach in different ways that we didn't before. I'm also a bit older and can live with less adrenaline (or less frequent). What I want to say is that it is more a matter of expectations than practicality. If you intend to spend a lot of energy and time sailing, probably a monohull might be a better option, there are fun ones that are lighter and much easier to rig. For that alternative, I would advice no to test drive a cat, though, or you will have a tough time deciding afterwards.[/quote]
No HTML tags allowed (except inside [code][/code] tags)
