hiya folks...

Here's "civilisation" www.opotiki.info/business/opotiki-harbour-bar-camera/opotiki-harbour-development-project - i know a couple of competent and affordable guys in the area that could get the trailer prepared for the trip back south. be an adventure no doubt...

Did you take it on the ferry or on its own bum?
I saw a question in a group on FB someone asking about the wisdom of taking a 15ft boat from Bluff to Stewart Is on it's own bum, the majority of people thought it was a stupid idea, but being FB it was hard to tell how many of the posters knew the area of water well.

I'd love to go there, in the summer. Infact anywhere down south in the summer would be amazing. Last proper trip down that way was kayaking Doubtful sound while I was at uni. None of us took a watch so we missed our pick-up for the ride out. The operator was incredulous when he found out the reason we missed the pick-up. That, and we worked out there were less sandflies at night so did a lot of night paddling...
PS, one of the guys on that trip went on to be a field safety officer in Antarctica for several seasons, and another guy ended up living and working in some random country for a while, Turkmenistan I think it was. Awesome trip that was.

Good stuff.
Sea Lions - reminds me of a story, sleeping out on Oreti Beach.

Another uni trip, coined the 'Blunder down-under tour" cause of all the screw ups. Mid winter, me and my mates tried doing the Kelper track. We were hanging out in Te Anau and there was this snow warning imminent, but the weather didn't arrive for the 2 or 3 days we were waiting for it in Te Anau, so started the Kepler track. Of course it started snowing the very afternoon we started the track and only just made it into the Luxmore hut (more like a massive hotel) up above the snowline. Consequently we were trapped in there for a fairly long time. Maybe 4 days I think.
We were bored shitless and had nothing to do accept lying around in our sleeping bags trying to keep warm. A couple of us had new MacPac down ones which happened to be purple in colour. One of the guys coined a song that went "I'm a giant purple sexually frastrated sea-slug, ladedada...
(one of our games was to sing half a line of a song and get the tune stuck in someone elses head, to piss them off, like "Brown Girls in the ring Tra...)

Anyway, we walked back out the way we came from the Kepler track and ended up sleeping on Oreti Beach. It was about -14deg and the top 2 inches of sand was frozen like steel. For some reason, one of the guys said his new sleeping bag was so good he wouldn't need the tent, so we all ended up sleeping out on the sand on ground mats. It was feckin cold.

About 2am one of the guys is so cold he gets up to go for a walk and warm up. Anyway, he comes running back in alarm that there was a sealion about 50m away. As we are all lying on the sand in sleeping bags we look like lady seals or something, and having been singing the purple sexually frustrated sea-slug song for so long, non of us want to be raped by a sea-lion. Never got out of a sleeping bag so fast in my life.

Then of course the car battery died in the cold and we were stuck out there. Very nearly facing a second night on the beach. A local gave us a lift into town to buy a new battery and dropped us back out (battery wouldn't jump start and wouldn't crash start, we killed it good).

Anything can be sailed single handed if you are ambidextrous enough.
I sail a 37ft 6t yacht solo.
Main point for my boat is that it has a tiller, so I can stand in the cockpit with the tiller between my knees and reach the mainsheet and headsail winches at the same time. I would think the same would apply for any of these trailer boats, assuming they all have tillers. That means you can tack / gybe / steer / trim the sails etc all from one spot.

All my halyards are at the mast. It just takes a bit of forethought and a wee bit of running back and forth. I've also got a good hydraulic autopilot, an older spare tiller pilot (which hasn't gone for about a decade) and the most reliable, some spear gun bungy connected to 8mm braid. That loops over the tiller and can go back to existing jammer cleats each side of the cockpit so I can adjust the tension and bias to either side easy peasy. Doesn't make the battery go flat and impossible to blow the fuse. I highly recommend all shorthanded sailors get some - even if you have the latest and greatest tiller pilot or what not.

I'd expect the loads on one of these to be fairly manageable, easily handled with one arm king of thing. The bigger the boat the harder the work. 

I can't comment on rigging and launching, but if you are fairly resourceful I'm sure you'd work it out. Wouldn't be much more complicated than launcheing your MAC 360 by yourself. You might need to make some simple mods to raise and lower the mast solo. I can't remember the names of the bits but a short stick (1 m ish) off the mast base at right angles to the mast so you can winch it up from the bow roller - is that a tabernacle? Stuff like that.

There are a whole lot of little arrangements and tricks that make solo sailing easier. The best book I've found (infact the only book really) is by Andrew Evans "Sailing Single Handed". Little things like how to leave the dock, fatigue management, setting your boat up, mindset, dealing with snaffu's and clsuterfucks. Some of the tricks on setting your boat up are handy. Not always applicable but by reading them you start thinking about how to set your boat up. Examples being some gun bungy as a back up auto-pilot, running the headsail sheet around the leeward winch (where it would normally go) and up to the windward winch so you can adjust sail trim without getting off your arse (especially if you are nice and comfy on the windward rail). Means you sail more comfortably and faster, but with less physical work.

Since you've got me started, other tricks like picking up a mooring bouy solo - run a long line from your anchor bollard, outside your lifelines and back to the cockpit. Back up to the bouy and hook it from the stern. Then let the boat drift back and turn around. You can then bring in the long line and make the mooring bouy good on the foredeck once you've hooked it and aren't getting blown off / drifting around like a bastard. Same goes for parking - most solo guys park backwards, as you are right there where you need to grab a line, and the boat steers far more easily from the back - that is where the rudder is (and outboard in your case). There are lots of little tips and anecdotes like that in the book.

PS I would think any of the trailer yachts you are looking at would be ideal for solo because the loads are light / manageable and the boats are small enough that nothing is too far away / you can reach fairly much everything standing in the cockpit. Small is good for solo. Big is hard work and gets near impossible to recover from snaffu's and the like.

www.thenile.co.nz/books/andrew-evans/singlehanded-sailing/9780071836531

Solo rocks but when doing it you never ever want to hear yourself say 'Oh Shit, I should have done that 5 minutes ago'.
You only want to be saying 'Thank F I did do that 5 minutes ago'.

Many fail to do that and it makes their existence far harder and more dangerous than it needs to be.