Notes on sailing yachts, kept over years

A yacht rewards patient digging.

Lode & Keel is a quiet reference for people who own, plan for, or are about to buy a sailing yacht. We work the seams: the survey before the handshake, the rhythm of a hull through a year, the honest arithmetic of time afloat, and the habits that keep a boat sound for decades.

Read the ownership guide Open the allocator

01 · Start here

Four places to begin

The survey

Read a hull the way a surveyor does: the bilge first, then the through-hulls, the rig, and the engine hours that show how the boat was really used.

Open the survey notes

The running log

Every service, part, and passage belongs on paper. A boat with a clear written history is easier to understand and easier to hand on.

See what to record

The allocator

Six sliders share one annual budget. Move any one and the others rebalance, so the split always adds to one hundred percent.

Try the split

Five habits

The working principles behind the study: record before you remember, inspect before you trust, budget in ranges, respect the weather, and sell with the file intact.

Read the principles

02 · How we look at a boat

Three layers, worked in order

Every boat has a surface, a seam, and a lode. The mistakes owners regret most come from skipping a layer because it looked fine from the dock.

Surface

The berth and the brochure

Lines, varnish, and a tidy cockpit. This layer matters for pleasure and tells you very little about structure.

Seam

The work you cannot see

Through-hull fittings, rig terminals, the wiring behind the panel, the anode that has quietly done its job. Budgets are lost here, and good surveys earn their fee here.

Lode

The sailing you came for

A passage at dawn, an anchorage at dusk, a wind that arrives when the forecast said it would. A well-kept boat makes this layer easy to reach. A neglected one buries it.

03 · Our rule

Every number has a source you can check

We do not publish prices, market forecasts, or survey results from boats we have not seen. A figure on this site is a definition, a formula you can check, or a number you entered yourself. When a question depends on your boat, your port, or your country, we ask for the detail instead of guessing an answer.

That keeps the pages useful for as long as the boats in them keep changing.

04 · Reading order

A sensible way through the site

Before you buy. Read the survey chapter of the ownership guide and take it with you when you walk a boat.
On the day you take ownership. Open a log using the record-keeping notes. A blank page is easier to fill than a missing history.
Each planning season. Test your assumptions in the allocator. Move the sliders until the split reflects what you actually expect to spend, then check it against your own records.