As most of you will know for the past few weeks i have been looking at a bigger boat to replace my 1986 Spacesailer 20 fin keel

The Spacy cost me around $10,000 a couple of years ago and sits on a mooring in the river outside our house and has cost me a couple of thousand in maintenance and upgrades since i purchased it

It has a cassette toilet, a outboard motor and everything on it is in fairly good condition

I work a 9 day fortnight and try to sail on most of my rdo's all year round as long as the weather is kind and on saturdays if my wife has nothing else she wants to do we will go for a half day sail on the Huon

We try not to sail on sundays as we normally go to church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or Mormons) but ocassionally we will leave on a friday afternoon and overnight in one of the bays further down the Huon and sail back up on saturday afternoon and occasionally on a long weekend with a holiday on monday we will stay away for a couple of nights and come back on the monday

Last year i started crewing on a 33 foot Jenneau in the local yacht club race season that runs from october through to april (most of our racing is done on saturdays and we have thursday night twilights) and this means i am not using the Spacesailer as much as before for 6 months of the year

The spacy is a fun little boat to sail and to replace it with a larger boat that we would like (30 foot plus) i would need to spend probably another $30,000 plus to get a boat that is probably older than the one i have in similar condition

The larger boat would be great for the overnighters but because it has more gear on it (inboard engine , plumbed in toilet, starting and house batteries, fridge and all the other gear that a bigger boat has i imagine i would be spending more money and time to maintain it

When i crew on the Jenneau stuff that is light and easy to do single handed on the spacy such as lifting, dropping and setting sails takes a bit more effort and to be honest i dont know if i would enjoy sailing a bigger and heavier boat as much as i do the spacy

At the moment we haven't got the time or the desire to venture to far out of the Huon and channel and i wonder if i should hang on to the spacy and just be happy with what i have

We also still owe some money on our home and i wonder if paying it off is a better choice than spending the money on a bigger boat that i won't get a lot of use out of for 6 months of the year while i am crewing on the Jenneau

I would appreciate the thoughts of any one who has been in a similar situation

Thanks in advance

Regards Don