Finding the needle in a haystack - how?

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by mhagen

How do you find the needle in a haystack? ...

Im from WI and all my time has been on rented Hunters on Lake Michigan. I did the ASA 101-106 and I know what the books say but I dont really have true sailing experience. I recently moved to Corpus Christi TX and Im looking seriously for a live-aboard mono-hull. So where do I start looking and how do I identify a "good deal" or compare boats on the market to identify the needle in the haystack?

If your prime requirement is to find a boat that you can live on NOW, and sailing is secondary, your current approach is probably reasonable. An apartment that you will try to sail

Otherwise... you really don't know what kind of needle you want, yet. You need to try out different needles to see which you like best. If you're not in a screaming rush to become a liveaboard, I would suggest buying a smaller "beater" sailboat to play and learn with while you finagle rides on other boats, to figure out what really grabs you.

Also, once you're "in" with the sailing crowd in Corpus Christi, you will probably fall across the right boat at the right time, which usually works out better than shopping by ads.

[dkroar]

Stuff to look at, as you get to know boats.

Marine Survey 101, pre-survey inspection

[syPhilos]

Originally Posted by mhagen

I narrowed my search to the following parameters:
Used Sailboat,
Monohull,
in the United States,
35-45',
and $1000 to $100,000.

The results returned 1,661 matches. How do I identify (at least on paper) the boats below the average market asking price and narrow this list to something manageable?
- - how do you find the needle in a haystack?

It's hard to find what you're looking for when you have no idea what you're looking for

"Below average market asking price" is the main concern, it looks like.

Steel? Plastic? Cement?
Shower? How many cabins? Headroom? Draft? One or two masts?

I could go on and on ...

[TrentePieds]

Quote: “I recently moved to Corpus Christi TX and Im looking seriously for a live-aboard mono-hull. So where do I start looking and how do I identify a "good deal"”

I would think you skive off down to the Bay Yacht Club, or some other yacht club, and join up so you can begin to hang out at the bar and make friends with people who have boats moored there. You will then also have the right to walk the docks and eyeball the boats that lie there, so you can discover what kind of boat turns your aethetic crank when you see 'er in the flesh. When you explain to owners what you are doing at the club, and what your goals are, you will get invitations to “come aboard”, so you can begin to understand how cruisers are arranged below decks, and your hosts will give you invaluable insights into the minutiae of the considerations that go into choosing and keeping a boat. You won't have to stand the shout at the bar very many times at all before you'll get invited out for a sail, and a dozen afternoon sails in different boats will soon give you a grip on the differences between them.

You'll discover that in many, many ways modern cruising boats are commodities. For all the marketing claims made about the “distinctive excellence” of a given type of boat, boats under, say, 70 feet LOA are, in fact, much or a muchness in terms of layout and amenities. That's because given the shape of boats' hulls, the interior space can really only be laid out in a very small number of ways.

Messing with spreadsheets as a tool for selecting your boat is likely to be a waste of time, because living aboard is NOT a particularly quantifiable activity. What you need to do is crash in enough different bunks to get a feel for what kind of bunk, and where located in the hull, will give you reasonably civilized comfort at night. A rack is NOT going to give you the comfort of your shore-side bed.

You need to try out the “heads” in sundry boats. Some heads are so cramped that you will find it hard, depending on your physical size, shape and age, to get a hand behind and below you when that is required. Some heads have showers that shower so effectively that after your ablutions you need to spend an hour abluting the head.

Living aboard in a place like CC will afford you the opportunity to spend a lot of time on “the back porch” and thereby augment your available living space by a huge percentage. Are you so new to sailing that you are a victim of the misbegotten notion that boats are steered by a wheel just like a car? Well, it ain't so. Tiller steering has numerous advantages for a live aboard. It doesn't wreck your back porch the way a wheel does.

“A good deal” is far too vague a concept to work with. NO boat is a “good deal” from a financial or investment perspective. A boat is – from every perspective I can conceive of – an indulgence. If you can afford to buy the boat for cash, and then walk away from the “investment” with a smile on your face because doing so doesn't impart any particular fiscal pain, and if you have enuff “passive” income to sustain the “ownership costs” of TWO modest shore-side condominiums, then, by all means, indulge yourself - be a boat owner.

Meanwhile, use your spreadsheet to set up a pro forma budget for your ownership expenses and for your living expenses as a live-aboarder. THAT is what counts. That is what will give you a decision base. A compilation of market data that are subject to wild fluctuations will not.

Good luck in your quest!

TrentePieds

[keyway]

MHAGEN
Your analysis is awesome. I agree with some of the other post about really knowing what you want in a boat. There are many on this forum who have been able to have great cruising life styles I think if you ask most will tell you that it don’t come easily. I’m at the other end of the spectrum I have a 30 tiki catermaran. It is bare boned as they come nothing but a VHF and a couple of sails. But I love my boat I owned it for 19years. It has been great for me and my family. She is far from perfect but we sure have some good times on her.

[hamburking]

I found your stats very interesting. Thanks for sharing. But, sorry to say, your numbers are all but useless for choosing a boat. Stats prove nothing. 87% of the population know this.

Here are some real criteria for you to consider:

Where will you sail? If you want to cruise the Bahamas, Florida Keys, or the 1000 islands (great lakes) then you will want shallow draft. That knocks out about 80% of the boats for sale right away. I'm curious how many boats in your sample have draft under 5 feet? If you are planning ocean passages, you'll want big tankage. How many boats in your sample can motor for 1000 miles without re-fueling? How many can carry enough fresh water to cross an ocean?

How many people on your boat? Do you need cabins or just bunks?

I suggest you start considering the features YOU want for the type of sailing YOU want to do. Very quickly, you'll find that there are only a few models which satisfy your needs. For example, I want a boat with lots of bunks, shallow draft, and blue water capable. So I quickly come up with boats like the Tartan 37, Pearson 35, and Bayfield 36.

The best way to figure out what you want is to visit lots of boats. Take some walks at every marina near you. View some boats for sale. You will quickly know what you like and what you don't.

[keithw88]

How about buying a motor boat to live on, get a small sailing boat for evening fun, join all the local sailing clubs and volunteer to help on any and all maintenance work, races and cruises as crew? In a season you will know so much more. And maybe the motor boat condo will be good enough as a long-tetm home, maybe not. But it be more comfortable than a sailing boat and easier to sell when you want to move. Motor boats do not generally command all the emotional issues and difficult decisions a sailing boat does, so buy a well-known, well-regarded vessel in OK condition, keep it spotless and learn how the systems work (you will need all that knowledge when you do a sailing boat).
Good luck!

[MJH]

Originally Posted by mhagen

How do you find the needle in a haystack? I mean if you have been in and around sailboats your entire life its probably not that hard right. You know what to look for, you know what to be cautious of, you have connections and can put ears to the ground for exactly what you are looking for, and maybe the perfect boat will come onto the market at exactly the right time and you can pounce on it.

That is not the situation I am in. At all! Im from WI and all my time has been on rented Hunters on Lake Michigan. I did the ASA 101-106 and I know what the books say but I dont really have true sailing experience. I recently moved to Corpus Christi TX and Im looking seriously for a live-aboard mono-hull. So where do I start looking and how do I identify a "good deal" or compare boats on the market to identify the needle in the haystack? Well here is what I came up with and I welcome any and all input. In a nutshell I used what I am good at to overcome my lack of knowledge and experience to at least give me a guide, a starting point, and a baseline.

Using Yachtworld as my primary search tool I narrowed my search to the following parameters: Used Sailboat, Monohull, in the United States, 35-45', and $1000 to $100,000. The results returned 1,661 matches. How do I identify (at least on paper) the boats below the average market asking price and narrow this list to something manageable? I data-scraped the Yachtworld website and entered all the info into Excel so that I could manipulate the data to identify those boats that stand out. But along the way I identified a few interesting statistics I thought you might all enjoy, see the pictures attached of the Excel graphs of the raw data.

Most Common Length: between 35-45 feet the most common size is 36' by far with 328 to choose from but with only 40 boats at 45' to choose from which is not surprising. Of interesting note however is that 39' foot boats are unusually un-common with only 81 on the market. Perhaps 39' foot boats are less popular but could be picked up for less that similar 38-40's??? Lets see...

Ave Price by Length: You dont have to have a 100 ton captains license to know that larger boats costs more and the data shows that. But on average its actually not that much, only $1,127 per additional foot between 35-45'. What is interesting is that 43' boats are driving a premium and look at this... 39' boats are nearly $8,000 less than the trending average.

Ave Price by Year: This is where it starts to get interesting. Looking backwards through the years, on average, a boat will loose $1,273 worth of value (according to the asking price) per year until they are fully depreciated, which currently are boats manufactured in 1963. Those boats older than 1963 are on average now starting to appreciate in value at a rate of 2.5% per year. All in all, sailboats dont make good financial investments in the long-run, stick with your 401K or keep that '69 Camaro a few more years. If your considering buying a 2004 boat however, the data shows you can save almost $10K by buying a newer 2005 - the biggest year-over-year difference in the last two decades.

Ave Price by Mfg'r: This data is harder to apply as you cant really compare a historically expensive boat to a less expensive boat. What is interesting is that of 1,661 boats for sale in this search the overall average price is $56,928 with most of the big production boat companies being higher than the average. Also there are 236 different boat manufacturers to choose from in this search. This info overall worked good to compare boats to those of the same brand/model to see how they stack-up against their peers. Or is that piers?

Most Common Mfg'r: This really surprised me. I knew the big production boat manufactures dominated the market but I didnt realize by how much. Catalina with 158, Hunter with 157, and Beneteau with 134 dominate the market. Along with Pearson, C&C, Tartan, and Morgan these make up the top 7 and after that, the number to choose from any particular manufacturer fall off a cliff. What I did like about this chart is that I could narrow down a manufacturer into what might be a sweet spot - not a largely common boat but not a one-off either. Of those about 30 manufactures fit that possible sweet spot.

So what did I learn from this quick exercise? I dont really know yet to be truthful. Of course all this data doesn't mean anything compared with actually seeing the boats I am interested in. But what I did like is that I was able to narrow down this list of 1,660 to a more manageable number of 96 and then narrow that down to 38 possibilities. And from there I will have to go page-by-page and start making phone calls and some weekend trips to see them for myself. But overall I am happy as 38 is much more manageable. Hopefully I can find that one that gets me excited enough to make an offer on and get a survey.

So that is the approach I am taking - how do you find the needle in a haystack?

All very interesting but now you need to do the hard work of seeing what money will buy and what you get for it. In other words start looking at boats and determine what you like and don't like. Keep looking until your sick of it...and then look some more; you can't see too many boats. Additionally, read all you can...the library is free and I have taken out very book from mine at one time or another.

In conjunction with that you need to bite-the-bullet and decide what kind of sailing you are going to do. That's basically CRUISE or RACE that require very different selections. Then comes the where: COASTAL, OFFSHORE, or PASSAGE MAKING. Again, boat selection for these venues differs in my opinion...no boat can do all things well; its called tradeoffs.

Sailing is one thing but boat ownership is another realm. You can tiptoe through the ownership game by staring small (30' or less) and work your way to a larger boat...most of us do it that way I think. Or just jump into the bigger boat and call it educational expense. I went from 22' to 28' to 42' and found the last jump much more involved as it was in conjunction to changing my WHERE and the boat and necessary systems were more complicated. If you are intuitive enough to make that decision early and stick to it you may be able to save some money. But life's experiences have a habit of changing our outlook and desires, so don't be hesitant to accept the change when it comes.

Good luck on your boat search.

~ ~ _/) ~ ~ MJH

[SV Sailfish]

If I were a professor of statistics, I would give you an A+ on your paper.



But if I were a newbie, I would hang out where the sailboats are. Walk the docks. (a lot) Then walk them some more. Eat, sleep and breath around marinas, yacht clubs, dry storage, work yards. club races, chandleries, etc. Put enough effort in and soon you will have a PHD in what not to buy. (very important)

Get off the computer. Dump that spread sheet and get out there and wander the docks. Good luck to you!

[Shrew]

No matter how much you try, you won't know what you really want or need until you start actually using it. What you do and how you use it dictates what you want and don't want in a boat. This is different for everyone.

What you think you'll be doing and how you'll be using is very different from the final outcome in just a few years. You won't get your perfect boat on the first boat.

[MJH]

Originally Posted by MJH

All very interesting but now you need to do the hard work of seeing what money will buy and what you get for it. In other words start looking at boats and determine what you like and don't like. Keep looking until your sick of it...and then look some more; you can't see too many boats. Additionally, read all you can...the library is free and I have taken out very book from mine at one time or another.

In conjunction with that you need to bite-the-bullet and decide what kind of sailing you are going to do. That's basically CRUISE or RACE that require very different selections. Then comes the where: COASTAL, OFFSHORE, or PASSAGE MAKING. Again, boat selection for these venues differs in my opinion...no boat can do all things well; its called tradeoffs.

Sailing is one thing but boat ownership is another realm. You can tiptoe through the ownership game by staring small (30' or less) and work your way to a larger boat...most of us do it that way I think. Or just jump into the bigger boat and call it educational expense. I went from 22' to 28' to 42' and found the last jump much more involved as it was in conjunction to changing my WHERE and the boat and necessary systems were more complicated. If you are intuitive enough to make that decision early and stick to it you may be able to save some money. But life's experiences have a habit of changing our outlook and desires, so don't be hesitant to accept the change when it comes.

Good luck on your boat search.

~ ~ _/) ~ ~ MJH

I will add to my earlier post my recommendation to get a subscription to Practical Sailor Magazine. In addition to monthly articles on how to care for your boat they have a large library of their books on virtually every sailboat topic including boat reviews and selection. I have been a subscriber since 1995.

Again, good luck with your search.

~ ~ _/) ~ ~MJH

[Rising Tide]

Originally Posted by rbk

You’re comparing apples to steak. What are your plans? Cruising goals? Staying near CC? Just cruising the gulf coast? Venture out to the islands? B line for the South Pacific? Keep cruising lakes? Casting off next week?

+1. Also, you are using the wrong metaphor. You are looking for the "diamond in the rough", not the "needle in the haystack".

Good luck.

[MVNightWatch]

Get out of your head and into your heart! Go walk the docks and fall in love. Make a few mistakes. Go boating. You can do spreadsheets along the way. Find out what it is that attracts you. Enjoy! ;-)

[boatpoker]

Interesting data.

Leaving for Cuba in a couple of hours and won't be back for two weeks but .....

When (if) you ever get down to one specific model, shoot an email to boatpoker@gmail.com and I will respond with the soldboats.com data for that model.

[Down East]

Originally Posted by Shrew

No matter how much you try, you won't know what you really want or need until you start actually using it. What you do and how you use it dictates what you want and don't want in a boat. This is different for everyone.

What you think you'll be doing and how you'll be using is very different from the final outcome in just a few years. You won't get your perfect boat on the first boat.

Too true!
I switched from racing to cruising 4 years ago and even though I had been sailing 30+ years and owned many boats, I felt like I was in a similar place getting my first true cruiser.
I just bought my new (to me) cruiser 2.0 boat. Some requirements stayed, but there were many new ones.
There is lots of great advice in this thread that I won’t repeat, but resale for a known quantity boat should be part of your search - in other words don’t get a white elephant that will be difficult to sell or may be subject to higher price volatility.