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Upside of Downsizing to a Trailerable Trawler

Upside of Downsizing to a Trailerable Trawler – Book Review

BOOKS
1. Upside of Downsizing to a Trailerable Trawler – Book Review
2. Women Onboard Cruising Slideshow
3. Women On Ranger Tugs

Living the Dream–

by Milt Baker
PassageMaker Magazine–

Upside of Downsizing to a Trailerable Trawler

Reading this e-book, I couldn’t help but wonder how many cruisers might be tempted to follow the example set by Jim and Lisa Favors, a couple with thousands of miles of Great Loop cruising experience who, after five years of full-time living aboard, gave up their comfortable 40-foot trawler for a trailerable 27-foot Ranger Tugs.

Like many other PassageMaker readers, I’ve gone aboard boats like this at boat shows, asking myself whether my wife and I might someday want to downsize and try to squeeze into a smaller boat. A trawler yacht that can be towed over the highway and cruised in many different areas each year, avoiding long passages over water. After all, it’s a whole lot faster and cheaper to cover the distance between, say, Ft. Lauderdale and Halifax or San Diego and Seattle at 60mph, compared to displacement speeds. “One of the beauties of this plan,” the Favors wrote as they were planning their move, “is that we’d be able to cut out a lot of long boat travel days by driving to the heart of a spot and dropping the boat into the water.”

See full review here Living the Dream, by Milt Baker, PassageMaker Magazine

EBook is available on AmazoniTunes, and Nook Books.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
The Favors are members of AGLCA (America’s Great Loop Cruisers’ Association) and MTOA (Marine Trawler Owners’ Association), two popular national boating clubs. They served on AGLCA’s Advisory Council for six years and have been writers for BoatU.S. Cruising Logs for five years. They have authored two other books on boating When the Water Calls… We Follow (about the Great Loop boating adventure), and Women On Board Cruising (25 women share their experiences of long-distance cruising).

Upside of Downsizing to a Trailerable Trawler

By Jim and Lisa Favors

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This Post Has One Comment

  1. Just finished trailerabe trawler and enjoyed it very much. As already avid boaters interested in this lifestyle, the information was invaluable.

    The book does an excellent job outlining your thought process in your decisions. However, I know that the best laid plans don’t always result as you had wished. I think it would be most interesting if you wouldn’t mind sharing things that you would do different if you were to do them again. This would apply to all three of the decisions that you made, the boat, the truck, and the trailer.

    For example:
    For the boat, are you still happy with your decision to buy the 27 foot Ranger or do you wish you had bought the 29 or 31and dealt with the wide load issues? Do you miss the space of your old 40 footer?

    For the trailer, some Tugnuts report that they prefer the three axle trailer for the R27. You put a lot of miles on your trailer. Are you happy with the 2 or would you get the 3 axle if you were ordering new.

    Lastly for the truck, a popular trend for large RV haulers is to buy a used small Semi truck (Volvo 610) , remove the third axle, and use it like a pickup. A used one bought at 500,000 miles is only half way through its life expectancy, can be bought for less than the cost of a new heavy duity pickup that will not last as long, has a similar wheel base as a pickup (once the rear axle is removed), has air ride seats, and has better breaking than a pickup as it was designed to haul more (80,000 lbs) With 500,000 remaining miles on their life expetancy, these trucks can outlast their owners.

    If you can tell, I am in the planning stage for our next boat and change in lifestyle. Thanks for any thoughts.
    Rob

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