New: Free Classy Classified Ads With Photos for Items Under $1,000

What do a Fynspray WS60 hand pump, a Hobie 16, a Viking life raft and a Danforth-style anchor have in common?

They are among the first few items posted in our Classy Classifieds since we added the photo feature to our FREE classies for items under $1,000. And in the small-world category, we ran into two of the people posting these items at the Pacific Sail & Power Boat Show at Westpoint Harbor in Redwood City. Colin (below) had just posted a photo of his 1974 Hobie 16, priced at $654 with a trailer! Who says sailing is a rich man’s sport?

We have a list of 9,747 improvements we want to make to our website, and this is the latest small adjustment we made to help get that unused gear cluttering up your life into the hands of someone who can actually use it. It’s part of the RRR (reduce, reuse, recyle) way of thinking.

Besides meeting Colin, we met the gentleman selling the Viking raft above (certified by Sal’s Inflatables through 2025). Unfortunately, we misplaced his name, but he told us he’d just sold his much-sailed Newport 30 and had recently purchased a newer Beneteau 31. He likes 30-ft boats because they’re big enough for comfort and small enough to singlehand.

Here’s Colin’s Hobie. He told us he just wasn’t finding the time to use it. He noted that you’re probably not going to win any races with his $654 Hobie, but you’re going to smile either way. They didn’t build 135,000+ Hobie 16s because everyone won! They’re just fun for knockabout sailing on the Bay, Delta or on California’s inland lakes — which all happen to be full this year. If you hurry, you could possibly sail Death Valley. (Has anyone tried that yet?) Shallow-draft boats only.

With your neighborhood post office, FedEx or UPS store, you can probably get most of those dusty items out of your garage, into a box, and shipped off to some deserving sailor who can put your items to good use. You’ll have some much-needed spare change and feel good knowing that what was unneeded in your house is appreciated in another.

The anchor above comes with 20 feet of 1/4-in chain and 200 feet of 3/8-in three-strand line. They say they can deliver it to Richmond Yacht Club if you’re in the neighborhood. It looks like a good lunch hook for something lightweight — this anchor wants to get its flukes into the mud again.

Since we’ve just started offering the free pictures, we’re waiting to find out the unintended consequences of change. We’ve noticed that on our Classifieds page, there is more gear shown than boats. That’s going to cause those who enjoy only boat porn to suffer a little. Luckily, if all you want to do is look at boats, you can use the menu of boats in specific lengths on the right to see the good stuff.

If you do have gear you want to sell for under $1,000 and want to include photo(s) just click here. If you want to see all the latest boats and gear posted click here. There’s new stuff popping up all the time, like a nice little West Wight Potter 19 just showing up for $11,500.

Now there are only 9,746 improvements left to make to the website.

While these ads are free, what is not free is printing the monthly issue of Latitude 38 and updating our website and readers. If you’d like to make a contribution to help Latitude continue to cover West Coast sailing and offering free Classifieds, you can do that here.