Q: I'm looking for a family cruising boat on which my wife and I and our two young children can do some day-sailing with a view to anchoring overnight. What characteristics should I be looking for (other than safety), and what trade-offs should I be prepared to make?

Tom C.
Ithaca, New York

A: You're right on target — safety comes first, and there will be at least a few trade-offs once your top priorities are considered. Safety aspects include stiffness, a secure cockpit (no deck-sweeping boom), winches out of the seating area, child-safe stove/fuel, swim platform (ladder second choice), to name a few. Comfort onboard includes, for a start, separate sleeping areas, snug berths, play area (quarterberth?), and plenty of stowage, along with a dinghy that will easily transport all of you.

You may have to trade off some performance, but check with owners: a boat that's all stow and no go may take forever to get to the evening's anchorage, and those kids will need to run off some steam!

A trailerable boat may be worth considering, if you have a spot to keep it and would enjoy driving to various launch sites, for changes of cruising scene without the longer sails.

Q: There's a 45-foot ferrocement boat for sale in our town that a local engineer built for himself 15 years ago. It's a lot of boat for the bucks; is there a catch, or is it a steal?

Kitty C.
New York, New York

A: Caveat emptor. Friend of ours had a very large ferro boat completely surveyed before he bought her, only to find out several years later that the hull had virtually lost its integrity through the oxidizing of the chicken wire on which the cement is laid up. The degradation process is insidious, and there are no reasonable remedies. With more traditional boat-building materials, including the modern ones, what the surveyor sees is usually what you get.