Greetings Porter, welcome aboard!

I grew up sailing a Wayfarer in the Detroit area back in the Seventies. Forget the Ariel. Get yourself a boom tent and some sleeping bags, pack the wife aboard and head to Georgian Bay. I remember seeing Frank Dye lecture on sailing his Wayfarer from Great Britain to Iceland at one of the Wayfarer fleet meetings back then. His grainy 16mm films of his voyages were astonishing and made a big impression.

Frank Dye:

"Offshore cruising in an open boat can be hard, cold, wet, lonely and occasionally miserable, but it is exhilarating too. To take an open dinghy across a hundred miles of sea, taking weather as it comes; to know that you have only yourself and your mate to rely on in an emergency; to see the beauty of dawn creep across the ever restless and dangerous ocean; to make a safe landfall - is wonderful and all of these things develop a self-reliance that is missing from the modern, mechanical, safety-conscious civilised world."

Good luck finding an Ariel. I wouldn't be too picky about condition. They are extremely well made where it matters and very easy to work on.

Ben