Buy cheap & repair ... or buy expensive and go?

[Tspringer]

Charlie,

Reviewing the Third Day costs it would appear that the $95K total includes the original $37K costs to purchase the boat. He also says they have spent possibly $20K additional not listed so it would seem the refit costs were perhaps $78K.

No doubt a bigger boat will cost more for some things. I also recognize that I will need to do as much of the work as possible myself and not just due to cost considerations.

My main criteria in choosing the final boat will be that after a full and in depth analysis and survey it can be refit within budget. I plan on spending extra time, effort and money on wiring and electrical system upgrades, tankage and plumbing and fuel filtering and engine maintenance systems.

I really lean toward getting a boat and planning to refit just about everything rather than attempting to identify just those items that demand replacement and doing them alone. I have found that its often easier to really tear things apart and then replace everything at once while access is easier than to "bandaid" things as you go along.

YachtWorld.com Boats and Yachts for Sale

My wife and I looked at that boat when at the Annapolis boat show earlier this month. This could be a decent candidate. The engine has about 2500 hours on it and the standing rigging is good. The boat has some other things going for it.... but in general needs a complete refit. Its been on the hard for well over a year and it needs a fair amount of interior cosmetics though the exterior actually looks pretty good (it needs a good cleanup for sure and all the teak needs to be refinished... in short its ugly but solid).

I admit that much of plan is driven by a desire to have the boat setup the way I want it and to have confidence that it really is "RIGHT". Sometimes its very hard to pay someone else to do the job you want done.


Terry

[Tspringer]

Originally Posted by Ex-Calif

The caveat of course is that you don't put a 50' boat in your garage and work on it in the evenings.

If you can get it in your back yard that would be great! If you have to keep it in a boatyard and the boat yard is close, that's pretty good. If the boat is at a yard 45 minutes from you, that really slows down the process. Unless of course you can stop working a real job and work on the boat full time - that would be awesome.

This is the big quandry!

I live north of Atlanta about a mile from Lake Lanier. I could either have the shipped here to a local marina about 15 minutes from my house where I could easily work on it pretty much every day. But I would have the costs of transporting it here and ultimately back to the ocean. I figure round trip that could add up to $8K to my overall costs.

Or.... I could keep the boat in Savannah or someplace similar thats a 5 hour drive (or cheap flight) away. Then I would have to plan to go to the boat and stay there a week at a time to focus on working on it. Being self employed and using a cell phone and laptop with internet I can work from anywhere and its relatively easy to have work only take up perhaps 2-3 hours a day week on and week off (I have a good assistant). So I could make this strategy work.

At this point I really do not know which way would be better. I do suspect that if I keep the boat on the ocean I will end up paying the boatyard to do more of the work and thus it will cost more but will that added expense equal or exceed the cost of moving the boat back and forth?




Terry

[Charlie]

Terry:

I am debating he same thing myself. I figure cost to move it from OR to my home at $4k and then another $2k to get it from my house to the water. lots of good reasons to do it (i'm 2 hours from where I can work on the boat in the water) I'm leaning toward bringing it home but then I wonder if it is the right idea. What I am going to do is make a list of everything that I want to do and prioritize those things and see what would make more sense. Besides the conveenice of keeping it at home if I keep it in the water than I can sail as well as work on it and that sounds good to me. Its a hard decision. Good Luck with it.

Sorry I hadn't noticed the price of the boat and the sales tax were in that $95k figure. It still is good info though.

[Tropic Cat]

Guys, the experienced boat owners on here are trying to tell you something..

Originally Posted by Ex-Calif

Do you want to sail or work on a boat...
If you can buy 3-5 years old, sail for 2 years, refit the rig and then go you would have a solid plan IMO.

It's almost unbelievable how much time it takes to work on any boat repair project. Even small jobs take 4 times longer than you figure they will. The older the boat, the more time required. If a boat is 1970s vintage and is in decent shape, figure 500 hours of your own time will be required to whip her into shape. Not so good shape, well, you get the idea.

We all have a feel for how many refits are attempted and not completed, but I wonder if anyone keeps stats on how many completed boat refits vs divorces occur?

[Boracay]

Have you considered a newer smaller boat?

From what I have seen families can be just as happy in a 40' as a 50' and for the money that you are looking at you should get a boat in much better condition.

How about chartering a few boats with your family then having a talk about what they would like best. They are the ones who are going to be putting their fingers (and egos) under the line.

If you are planning on doing a lot of work on a boat the best might be to delay the purchase as long as possible then allocate 3 months (or more) full time to fix everything just before departure.

[Tspringer]

Newer and smaller doesnt necessarily help.... checked prices on a 3-4 year old 38' Hallberg Rassy lately?

As to size (not to divert the thread but after all 90% of threads end up skewing to the little boat argument anyhow) here is my wifes big issue: We will be living aboard full time, home schooling and raising 2 kids. We have active parents who will come and visit. She wants space. She says that when your sitting in an anchorage and a weather front is going through such that its raining hard for 3 days straight and your mostly stuck below, she wants enough space that everyone doesn't kill each other. We want each kid to have their own space.

I do not want a light weight, modern, cheap production boat. We could buy a 4-5 year old Beneteau, Hunter or other such boat and have 3 cabins and all the other stuff we want within our price range. I am sure it would sail well and be safe. But I doubt it would be as comfortable as it wouldnt be as sea kindly. I prefer a heavier built boat. If I sacrifice some pointing ability and ultimate speed thats fine by me.

Keep in mind too.... the Gulfstar 50 is a 50 foot boat, but its not a BIG 50 if you know what I mean. Its beam is fairly moderate compared to length.

The idea of buying the boat later and then rather than doing a refit a week at a time over a year tackling it all at once for 3 months or so is very interesting! I had really not thought about that much and it does warrant considerable consideration!

For one thing, money put into a boat now is money no longer working and earning toward the cruising kitty!

Here is another aspect of the whole "Buy New vs. Buy old and refit" question: If done correctly, buying an older boat and refitting it can have tax advantages. I am looking at the possibility of putting our boat into part time charter for the year after its complete. If I form a corporation now, buy the boat in the corporate name for charter use and then spend $75K on a refit I can write those expenses off against other income or other capital gains. I may never make much money from the charter use of the boat but thats not necessarily the point. So there can be many motivations for choosing one path over another!



Terry

[dcstrng]

Interesting question… At one point in younger period in life, my then SO and I chunked down what would have be well above the six-figure mark in `07 dollars on a forty-foot something ketch, and then proceeded to increase the outlay by about 40% through a significant refitting – sparkled and had all manner of gadgets… all on the premise of dropping it all and hitting the high-seas… although the boat was paid for, and we lived aboard for about half a decade, we never left the Chesapeake Bay even though we could easily have afforded at least a year. In large part I attribute that to our inability to mentally give up the dock – yachtsmen we were, sorta, sailors we were only wannabees..

These days my income noticeably overshadows what I used to make but like most I remain pretty much pay-check to pay-check… After a decade or so of more austere recreation pursuits, I came to this conclusion -- if cruising is about maintaining a certain landsmen’s lifestyle, then cruising will in all probability be expensive and short… However, if it is about changing one’s lifestyle, then the realm of possibilities expand measurably… For a variety of reasons these days I’d go with getting a cheap, but structurally sound, boat – renovating what I truly needed – ensuring that the stuff required for a seaman like passage is available with some redundancy and leaving many of the techno-toys and stuff from the high-dollar pages of the catalogues in the store…

Fiberglass hull, aluminum spars, Dacron sails… Dacron line, blocks and winches good stuff… well proven… anything metal on metal or electric should be backed up with something that works when the volts/amps take a hike, as they inevitably will…

[TAREUA]

From my own experience with my three kids, they need space-wise, what sailors have always needed: their own bunk & their own sea bag. Even then, they understand that everything on a boat (except certain books and stuffed animals) are community property and they can expect to have things stored in, on, under, above, and behind those bunks. Creating space on a sailboat for child or adult is always more about the mental than physical. As someone once wrote, 'If on a passage you say someone's name twice and they don't answer, leave them alone because they aren't home.'