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A week or so after Boot Dusseldorf I looked up my friend Marinus Meijers. He asked whether I had seen the Bihan 650. This trailerable boat by Finot-Conq has a carbon gunter rig. Marinus found it a very interesting boat. It is practical and fast. And easy enough to build yourself.

I started thinking about building a trailerable sailboat with 2 berths for overnighting. It brought back memories of our Sun 2000 of more than ten years ago. The overall dimensions of the Bihan 650 and the Sun 2000 are not so different. At 750kg, the Bihan is 400kg lighter than the Sun 2000. And it has more sail. Which makes it fast, but also a lot to handle when sailing singlehanded.

However, trailering is not going to be easy. Trailer and boat will weigh about 1100kg. It will be hard to pull boat and trailer out of the water with a front-wheel drive car. So you need a crane. And you need to carefully plan your trips around available cranes, harbour office times etc. So maybe the Bihan 650 is just too big to handle if you are on your own.

The 'pocket cruiser' class is a lot smaller. Most pocket cruisers have two berths which can be used for occasional camping or a weekend cruise.

The Lanaverre 17 which was built in the seventies is about 5.1m. It is a sailing dinghy with a cuddy cabin. The sailing rig is closer to that of a 470. Compared to a cruising Micro Cupper it is quite spartan. There are not many of these boats on the markets.

A bit shorter, but a lot more boat for its length is the 15' Pocketship designed by John Harris of CLC Boats. It is intended for home building from a kit. It has a gunter rig on a short mast and looks quite practical (but small).

At the bottom end, there is the Scamp, designed by John Welsford for home building from drawings. It is the shortest at 12' LOA. With its pram bow, it packs a lot of volume for its small length.