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Zero Dollar Cruising Dream | Halcyon 23
June 22, 2026 · 10 min · 21K views
Halcyon 23 heeling under sail toward distant shore
What this video covers
Practical Sailor acquired a Halcyon 23 for free and is using it as a hands-on teaching tool to examine whether the cheapest viable version of the cruising dream is actually achievable.▶ 0:29 The Halcyon 23 was designed by Alan Buchanan and built in Britain by Offshore Yachts starting in the late 1960s; roughly a thousand were produced, making it a genuine production boat.▶ 1:45 At just under 23 feet, with an 18.5-foot waterline, 7.5-foot beam, and 3,100-pound displacement carrying over 1,100 pounds of ballast, it sits in a specific category: small enough to keep costs manageable, heavy enough to behave like a real cruiser.▶ 2:12 The boat in the driveway has a fin keel — contrasted here with full-keel alternatives like Bayfield, Cape Dory, and Karl Alberg designs — and a small single-cylinder Volvo diesel of unknown condition.▶ 2:50 The transcript walks through how to evaluate a free boat: what makes it safe, what's repairable, and where the "cheap boat" math actually breaks down.▶ 1:12 It identifies comfort creep — adding refrigeration, batteries, and solar — as the mechanism that turns a low-cost escape into an expensive project.▶ 4:45 The core question driving the project is how to distinguish necessary repairs from budget-killing ones on a boat where smaller scale keeps costs proportional.▶ 7:58
Boats in this video
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