Rubber Duckie? No, a wooden duckie - Cruising Dream (TEST)

Wow, a real busy summer of visiting boats!

Duck on the ocean spilled from a container!

With writing a blog, I am sometimes between how much I divulge here (privacy) vs details of what we are doing. So I have decided not to do real time updates of what we see or do, but instead post after the fact. I remember reading on how a guy created a web site Please Rob Me, the site basically display places that are emptied as occupants have checked-in real time that they are somewhere else than home! Called me paranoid, but I do not do "check-ins".

So, over the last couple of weeks, we have visited many boats, Marine Trader 34, 36, Albin 36s and a Diesel Duck 38, and other boats that I will cover later.

Today, I want to talk about the Diesel Duck. Having never heard about these, thank god the internet is a wonderful place to find everything about anything...how did we live without that?

Anyways, it turns out Diesel Duck are really great boats, they exhibit a LOT of qualities that I ascribe to. They can be fully commissioned to be built from China by SeaHorse Marine starting in the $200K range or in Turkey by ASBoat Yachting in the $300K range.

They were designed by George Buehler for the common man to cross the oceans in the mid nineties, kinda like the philoshophy that Beebe had, but which was taken over by corporate greed, but I digress. Even on the used boat market, they uphold their value (steel).

I did find one homemade of wood and glassed over in Michigan for a reasonable price. We went and visited, and loved it. No a galley, but a kitchen. Not a head, but a bathroom with full 32inch shower. But, there is a but, we were all set on making an offer, until I investigated trying to find a marina slip for it. It turns out, marinas in Ontario, on lake Ontario anyways, do not welcome wood. I know, how stupid. Basically they state that unless the boat is classified as a wood classic (a 50s or so), they do not welcome wood into marines, even composite.

This nixes any value in the boat to resell if we ever need to. Very unfortunate, but as I have said before, the search continues. We are investigating our options again, I am toying with the idea of having a steel boat built locally (well the steel part), where we would do the rest...