Moody overall quality?

[Loredo]

This is a question for the (older) Moody owners.
I'm considering buying, what will most likely be my last boat, a Moody 64.
This boat had a rather short production time, I'm mostly interested in the fresher ones like say 2003-2005.
Over the past year or so I've checked the offerings from various brokers for this boat. One thing I've noticed frequently are claims for various systems that had been completely overhauled or replaced. The question that comes to my mind is why did things need overhaul or replacement?

Today I own a 2006 SO49 and despite the poor reputation of the "poor build quality" of these industrial boats, mine has had zero issues. Nothing has been overhauled or has needed replacement. All I've done are simply upgrades like solar panels, more AH, you know the usual toys we all think we need to have.

For this reason, before I jump into this project I want to ask you Moody owners: how is your boat holding up through the years?
Are there any known issues with these boats? Anything particular I should pay attention to?

Of course, I realize that a 13-14 years old boat will be needing a major refit.
I'm ready for new sails, new electronics, whatever worn out items, engine and generatore overhaul and eventually a new teak deck.

There's some major money involved, I know and I'm ready for it!
All this makes only sense though is the "base boat" is worth it.
This is probably my biggest question. Is a Moody build in the years I mentioned really worth my time and money?

Thanks in advance for any and all suggestions!

Loredo

[Pete7]

I think you need Dockhead to answer this question.

In the meantime what you are describing isn't anything to do with Moody's quality but about the fittings used in the construction. Toilets, electronics and sails et al will be bought from the same sort of suppliers as Beneteau, Bavaria and HR etc.

As you have found out they will require upgrades etc.

What I will say is the Moody range of yachts were not cheap, indeed its the reason they gave up building the smaller yachts because they couldn't compete with the huge German and French builders on price without lowering quality. Some 28 years on since our Moody was built I haven't encountered problems with the quality of materials or the construction which I consider to be very high.

There is a very active owners association:

Moody Owners Information Exchange

Pete

[Bleemus]

The only thing wrong with a Moody are those damn Thornycroft engines they used to put in them. Other than that their build quality was excellent.

[robert sailor]

We have only owned ours for going on 5 years but we have sailed it hard at times. We ended
up changing engines which was a wallet reducer but by and large the structure has been bullet proof. The layouts are well done as Bill Dixon has a good eye for an all round cruising boat. Storage is OK but could have been better although ours is a 42 not a 64. We have found it to be good value all in all and would buy another one. Ours was a shoal draft and it doesn't point up with the deeper keel boats but it does very well off the wind. Our Atlantic crossing was a bit over 18 days with 4 of them in the mid 170's and several in the 160's so it does quite well on passages.

[Dockhead]

The Moody 64 is quite a lot like my boat, just scaled up a bit. You'll have to decide whether you like the layout -- I'm not actually sure that the scaling up was all that successful. But for sure it's a big boat with tons of space.


A bit of trivia about this boat: The prototype was entered in the ARC one year, and came in second ahead of not only the whole fleet of cruising boats, but the whole racing fleet but for only one racing boat.


The Moody 64 is from the last generation of English Moodys, when the maker, at the time the oldest yacht builder in the world, was trying to claw back its historic clientele from upstart Oyster. In the '70's and '80's, Moody had started to build smaller and cheaper yachts, and had started to lose its higher end client base. So at the end of the '90's, Moody started to fight back, introducing first the 54 (and my boat was the prototype), then the Moody 47, then the 64, then the 49, all of them finished to a higher standard and highly specified.

In the end, Moody lost this battle with Oyster and went bankrupt.

So what are the good and bad points of this, last generation of English Moodys?

Good points:

1. The structure is built to extremely high standards, second to none I think. The chain plates on my boat are bigger than the ones on a Swan 90 I spent some time on -- they must weigh 50 pounds each, and appear to have been stolen off a railroad bridge. These boats are fully stick built with no liner, no grid, etc. The bulkheads are fully glassed in and through-bolted. They are truly built like brick houses. You will notice a very big difference compared to your Jeanneau.

2. The boats sail very well. They are much lighter than the corresponding Oysters, because they are fully cored with encapsulated balsa blocks, a more expensive and stronger construction than solid glass. They have semi-balanced partial spade rudders, and the rig and underbody are well designed. Light, well-balanced helm, and quite fast.

3. These boats are very highly specified in terms of deck hardware, much better than the base specification of comparable Oysters. My boat has 8 cockpit winches, 4 of them powered, and has all the best stuff from the Selden catalogue including towable heavy duty jib cars, traveler with dedicated winches, etc., etc, etc.

4. Very high quality electrical installations and systems.

5. Very good tankage (most of the tanks are sourced from the superb Tech Tanks company, made of plastic)

6. A lot of good design points, like transparent plexiglass counterbalanced washboard and scuttle, fuel filler in the dog house roof and not at deck level, cofferdam around the bow thruster, etc., etc., etc. Bill Dixon is a great designer, and it shows in lots of the little things.

Some weak points:

1. They are not, in my opinion, as beautiful to look at as some others, like the Holman & Pye designed Oysters, but it's a matter of taste.

2. They are "raised saloon" boats like Oysters (actually this configuration was pioneered by Moody in the '60's), but with a huge drawback -- you can't see out of or open the forward saloon windows -- they are vestigial. What a shame! This is really nice in Oysters and Discoveries -- you can look out over the bow from the salon, and you can open these windows to let the breeze in at anchor. When I bought my boat, I was choosing between this and an Oyster 485, and I almost didn't buy the Moody because of this.

3. The interior fitout is inferior to Discovery and Oyster. The materials are good -- no chip board anywhere (unlike in Oysters), but the hardware is inferior and the design is just not as high end looking. Still a BIG step up from regular mass production boats.

4. The company doesn't exist any more, so forget about any kind of organized support. The designer, Bill Dixon, is of course still in business, and many of the original craftsmen are still working out of the old Moody yard (now Swanwick Marina on the Hamble River), but there is no actual support as we know it.



So those would be the main points. There is nothing wrong with your Jeanneau -- in fact this is my favorite mass produced yacht. These were still stick built up into the early 2000s. They sail well and are very well designed. The main disadvantages compared to higher end boats is that they are not as strong structurally, and the fitout doesn't hold up as well over time. But otherwise these are great boats and great value for the money.

[barnakiel]

Overall good quality on par with HR, Contest, Oyster, etc.

b.

[Loredo]

Thanks for your answeres!
It looks like I was a bit too suspicious having read as much as possible between the lines.

In fact, I did visit the 64 @ a boatshow several years ago and still do remember the good impression about the boat I had taken home with me.
Not the best quality I've ever seen but for sure way above my Jeanneau's.

I'm not looking to get the best of the best (if that even exists) but the one boat that fit's my likes and need's best.
What I like about the 64:
Twin wheels, rather large and comfortable cockpit (for a center cockpit).
Cutter rig.
Highly spec'd deck harware.
The galley in a separated zone; no walk-through to a cabin.
NO waste-space tender garage.
Like Dockhead pointed out, tons of space. (I don't like crowded places)


Don't like:
Mostly the age of the boat and the needed re-fit that will be due.

Yet, IF I can get the boat at the right price then I can spend a lot of money to get my dream boat and still spend less than in a new one.

Dockhead, at the end of the day your boat is very similar to the 64. Anything I should or need look for when I'm going to visit the boat(s)?
Anything in particular that you've noticed on your boat that I should check out?

The problem is that none of the boats is near to me. I'll have to take flights to visit them. Thus, I don't feel like sending "my" surveyor to visit the boats before I have seen them on my own.

Thanks,

Loredo

[Williamp]

Hi, sorry to burst the balloon but......I had a late 90's moody and there were some fundamental issues with it. Bilges always wet, rusty keel bolts, questionable electrical installation, not happy with the hull deck joint, it seemed to leak where the aluminium backing plate that ran the length of the boat was screwed and riveted. If you wanted to get at any pipe wire etc it was a nightmare.I've now got a Malo which whilst not without the odd quirk is just a joy to work on. Sorry don't kid yourself you are getting Swedish or Dutch quality on the cheap. This is sent with a heavy heart. We looked hard at a m47 but just couldn't face the same issues again. Good luck with your search.

[Jack Verschuur]

Not wanting to mud the waters, and by no means an expert on anything, but also looking at older Moodys (471)
I believe there is a fundamental difference between the boats of say '70-ies and 80-ies vintage and the later boats. In the earlier period, from what I read, they were very solidly built vessels with high quality deck-fittings, rig etc. This was also expressed in their price, they were by no means cheap boats.

Wasn't Moody at the time the oldest yacht-builder around?

I seem to remember that the original Moody yard was closed at the end of the eighties, and most, if not all of the work was contracted out?

Best,

Jack.

[rourkeh]

Not to be argumentative but Moody is far from the oldest yacht builder at any time in its history.
Before the state of Maine was even officially a state, Caleb Hodgdon was building boats along its shores. Specifically, he constructed wooden schooners, starting in 1816, for the fishing fleet of Boothbay Harbor. They are still around.

Also under no conditions is a cored hull, even encapsulated balsa, or the much stiffer "Aramat" stronger than solid glass construction.

[Bleemus]

And Camper Nicholson makes most builders look like infants.

[Sailmonkey]

Originally Posted by rourkeh

Also under no conditions is a cored hull, even encapsulated balsa, or the much stiffer "Aramat" stronger than solid glass construction.

One must first define strength.

A cored hull is much stronger in any sort of deflection loading that a solid hull.
A solid hull will be stronger when faced with point loading such as puncture from rebar.

So, you're both right and wrong......

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by rourkeh

Not to be argumentative but Moody is far from the oldest yacht builder at any time in its history.
Before the state of Maine was even officially a state, Caleb Hodgdon was building boats along its shores. Specifically, he constructed wooden schooners, starting in 1816, for the fishing fleet of Boothbay Harbor. They are still around.

The cited fact about Moody is a fairly widespread belief on this side of the pond. Sounds like it may not be entirely true, but since I had never heard of Caleb Hogdon, which seems to predate Moody by 15 or 20 years, I guess we might modify the claim to say "oldest yachtbuilder in the world that anyone has heard of" or "oldest yachtbuilder in the world of decent scale".

Originally Posted by rourkeh

Also under no conditions is a cored hull, even encapsulated balsa, or the much stiffer "Aramat" stronger than solid glass construction.

This is false -- a cored hull is up to 4 or 5 times stronger and 4 or 5 times stiffer than an uncored one -- BY WEIGHT -- than solid GRP. Which means you can have double or more the strength and stiffness for half or less the weight.

Which is why not a single racing boat that I've ever heard of has been built with an uncored hull in the last 20 years. Nor can you buy any high end cruising boat built in Europe except Oyster, without a fully cored hull.

There are disadvantages of course -- high cost, risk of water damage -- but that's getting rather far off topic.



Concerning Aramat -- this is a hybrid glass/Kevlar mat for boatbuilding. It is lighter but most certainly not stronger than normal E-glass. Kevlar is in fact considerably less strong than E-glass -- it is used in boat hulls not for strength or stiffness but for penetration resistance.


The last generation of English Moodys have Kevlar outer skins (ahead of the keel), for this purpose. It does not make them any stronger, but helps to prevent hull breaches in case of a collision.



http://www.christinedemerchant.com/c...omparison.html

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Bleemus

And Camper Nicholson makes most builders look like infants.

The name does indeed -- goes back to the 18th C.

But the C&N company as we knew it is long gone, and the name, as used in connection with yacht building, is now just a stencil brand of Nautor (as Moody is of Hanse). I don't think a sailing yacht has been built with the C&N name since the '90's. The core part of the remnants of the company now does marina consulting and is based in London.

Incidentally, our friend above, Pete7, has a lot of experience in Nick 55's, IIRC.

[Pete7]

Camber and Nics yard still exists and just 1/2 a mile from me, but they only carry out refit work for small commercial vessels and yachts etc now. C&N worked very closely with Halmatic just up the harbour from them and also now gone.

The Moody boat building business certainly goes back a while but probably not the oldest. I have their history book somewhere so must dig it out.

The older generation of yachts were probably designed by Angus Primrose and substantial numbers are still sailing today. Easily identified by the flare in the bows.

The C&N 55 is a lovely yacht designed in an era when yachts looked like yachts and large crews were easily available and didn't need much space. However, most would need some serious interior work to be an acceptable cruising yacht. They were lifting out the Royal Navy 55s a couple of years ago so I stopped by and asked how they kept the topsides immaculate. Answer they are painted every few years.